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Comment by laidoffamazon | Hacker News Reader

I’ll be honest this seems low for what he’s been through.

I would voluntarily go to jail for 37 days for that amount.

I think it's a shame this doesn't come with criminal charges, though. False imprisonment? Kidnapping?

Would you do that if you were an ex-law enforcement officer who's racial profile puts you under the protection of criminals on the yard that largely support the person you heckled while not knowing that it was only going to be 37 days?

I wouldn't, but that does really put some perspective on it.

His trouble isn't just from the time in jail, though. It's from all the Trump supporters who harass him as well. Previously, and in the future.

Would you live through the stress of a legal case with unknown legal costs and unknown incarceration time for that amount of money?

No. I'm just saying said amount seems fair from the monetary side of this case's specifics.

(And let's face it, the outcome here was guaranteed, and the inevitable settlement was always gonna include attorney fees or be done pro-bono.)

The outcome wasn't guaranteed; that's the scary part. If Trump had decided to take a hand then it could have been drawn out for months at a minimum.

At some point, barring him getting beaten to death in jail, this was always going to get in front of a judge who'd go "uh what the fuck?!" It's about as slam-dunk of a situation as you could come up with.

I could say that about a litany of court cases in the previous decade, yet here we are, our president winning immunity for all tax evasion, in the past and future, for his whole family, and getting seditious white supremacists paid while doing it.

It is my fervent hope that said fund will, when it encounters a judge, collapse for similar reasons.

He wasn’t jailed for 37 days. He was jailed indefinitely. Every day he didn’t know if things would get worse. He didn’t know how long he was staying. He was already in the absurd scenario for being jailed for a meme so anything was possible at that point. He happened to get out after 37 days.

And in cases like this, the actual perpetrators typically don't pay a cent out of their own pockets. Instead, the city or county indemnifies the defendant, either directly or through insurance. Which means that taxpayers (possibly including the injured party) are the ones who pay.

Indeed. Qualified immunity is a stain on American jurisprudence.

You can almost never hold anyone in government accountable. You are forced to sue your own community to get some shred of justice while the actual people who violated your rights face zero accountability.

Tell lawmakers who want your vote this November that you want an end to qualified immunity. Agents of the state should not be less accountable to the laws of the land than regular individuals.

IMO this case is a good example of one that ought to void qualified immunity as it currently stands, though I know in practice it's more difficult. I think it's plain that a "clearly established" constitutional right was knowingly violated here.

I would say it seems unbelievably high! I've known people t-boned by Semi Trucks that ran a red light and they couldn't get 1/10th of that because you can only prove so many actual damages. A single month in the slammer caused this guy $835k in proven damages? You'd probably lose your job, go into arrears on rent/car/mortgage, but it's hard to believe that every day in prison was costing this guy $22k

This was settled out of court. Nothing was proven. For the county to settle for this much, there must be some things going on behind closed doors that the people involved do not want to be made public.

Not an expert here, but after his lawyer's cut and taxes, my guess is he'll take home around $250K ???

It’s about what your average senior engineer makes here at hackernews per month

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