Posted on 03/26/2014 10:44:06 PM PDT by Ken H
A University of Virginia student charged last year with assaulting Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control agents attempting to stop her for underage possession beer that turned out to be sparkling water has filed a $40 million lawsuit against the state and seven agents.
Among other things, Elizabeth K. Daly’s 47-page suit, filed Tuesday in Richmond Circuit Court, alleges malicious prosecution, failure to train ABC agents appropriately, and six counts of assault and battery.
(Excerpt) Read more at roanoke.com ...
Good for the gander, good for the goose, or something like that. In any case—yes, let them pay. Nothing hurts more than a punch to the wallet. Yeah, I know I got the adage wrong, so don’t correct me.
Bottled-water purchase leads to night in jail for UVa student
06/29/2013
When a half-dozen men and a woman in street clothes closed in on University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, she and two roommates panicked.
That led to Daly spending a night and an afternoon in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Her initial offense? Walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream just purchased from the Harris Teeter in the Barracks Road Shopping Center for a sorority benefit fundraiser.
A group of state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents clad in plainclothes approached her, suspecting the blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water to be a 12-pack of beer. Police say one of the agents jumped on the hood of her car. She says one drew a gun.
Unsure of who they were, Daly tried to flee the darkened parking lot. "They were showing unidentifiable badges after they approached us, but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform," she recalled Thursday in a written account of the April 11 incident.
"I couldn't put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were ... terrified," Daly stated.
“The agents acted with actual malice, out of embarrassment and disgrace for their own intentional and grossly negligent acts and charged [Daly] with three felonies and did so out of anger and personal spite,” alleges the suit filed by Richmond lawyers James Thorsen and John Honey.
Exactly spot on. All they had to do was apologize for frightening the girls, but they decided to double down on stupid and charge them.
Bump
Normally I give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt. I this case (after reading the details of the incident) I agree the "victim" has a case.
I did not see a narrative of the student's physical injuries, if any, but $40 million is a bit much.
Sounds like another case of attorney contingency welfare...
If the case is being held in Charlottesville, I doubt that the ABC guys have much of a chance. The town survives off the students, and usually is pro-student on just about everything. I doubt she gets the $40 million, but she’ll walk away with at least a quarter of that.
Normally, I would agree with you.
However, I hope she gets every penny.
Not for her interest, but ours.
The only way you get through to the jack booted thugs and their superiors is to break them monetarily.
I just wish the settlement would come from the retirement fund of these thugs.
If that happened enough around the country, perhaps they would return to serving the people rather than trying to be our masters.
I also hope all these morons are fired.
You just don’t “get” this, do you? And here, I thought that the law-and-order knee-jerk crowd had disappeared recently, “for some reaason”.
Although the system took great pains to protect itself by “expunging” the records, you can bet your a$$ that fingerprints, documents, and so on are still in the system. And the Internet never forgets. You can be assured that this incident will show up in a background check. This person’s future is diminished, irreparably. Yet, you call this person, who was terribly abused and thrown in jail for no reason, a ‘victim’ with quotes.
What is it going to take, short of you yourself becoming a victim, to understand what is happening here? Hasn’t the daily litany of SWAT break-ins, anal searches, dog shootings, and general terrorizing of the populace had even the smallest effect yet?
The damages are for her, in an attempt to make her whole, and for them - as punishment. The entire populace of the area that supported these thugs need to be “victimized” in their wallets, in order to convince them to hire and support law enforcement that actually enforces and upholds - GASP - the law, lawfully.
I want to see “color of law” charges brought against these people. The penalties are still rather severe.
My sentiments exactly, only I hope it’s even more money!
OK, $2 million, and all seven Farce Enlawment agents should be beaten till they puke blood.
Dude - they MALICIOUSLY charged her with FELONIES, backed by the bottomless wallet of the tyrannical State. They need a nice big helping of chin music to back them off the plate.
“The agents said the ‘poor girl’ … now faced felony charges and was in trouble and made [Daly] sound dumb and silly for being confused,” the filing states.
Beyond malicious. I'm rethinking the beating thingee.
The agents? Or the state attorney filed the charges?
Look, I do think this looks like a standard good-old-boy thing, but I hope the suit at least got the actors correct, that it doesn’t look like law school sophomore.
Well said.
As a retired LEO I can tell you everything they did was wrong. NO uniforms, no marked vehicles, SWAT style antics (I wouldn’t dignify what they did by calling it “tactics”). Then trying to cover their asses with a malicious prosecution.
Cops are human. They make mistakes. More than once in my career I or my colleagues grabbed the wrong guy or thought we were witnessing a crime which turned out not to be the case. We promptly removed the cuffs, apologized and gave the individual a ride home. We got sued, once, but the damages were mitigated by our effort to set things right. More often, the victim of our error let it pass. Honest mistakes will almost always be defended and indemnified by the AG or solicitor and governing body. Responsibility for malicious or dishonest acts, errors of the heart, should be borne by the individual officer who commits them. Every department’s policy provides for this. It is too often not enforced.
I do not understand where this mentality comes from that says “If you put the cuffs on, you’d better charge him with something.” That isn’t taught in any academy. It is the first step down the road to lying, perjury and the destruction of credibility and respect. Yet it gets bantered around in locker rooms and perpetuates down through generations of cops.
The only way to counter it is through LEADERSHIP. Unfortunately that is a lost art.
every penny.
FYI
Apparently not.
When I was a teenager occasionally a buddy would get busted for Minor in Posession but it didn’t take 7 Dept. of Alcohol agents to do it. It was always the local small town cop......
Agreed...the money should come right out of THEIR hides; not the taxpayers. They should have to sell their homes to pay the bill, and their wages should be garnished until the end of time.
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