Това просто го споделям, без каквото и да било желание да влизам в каквито и да било по-нататъшни размишления, спорове, умозаключения и пр. Грег Елифриц е един от американците, от които съм научил много полезни неща за самия себе си както от лична комуникация с него, така и от неговия блог:
Освен инструктор, Грег си и е и действащ полицай. А това е негов пост от днес:
A little good news for me today.
The judge dismissed the $150 million dollar excessive force lawsuit filed against me by summary judgement.
That makes me happy. Knowing that the plaintiff will most certainly appeal and/or re-file the suit in state court makes me want to drink more. At least I have a 60-day respite before starting the next round of legal shenanigans.
I've heard lots of students over the years speaking dismissively of the impact that a lawsuit would have on their lives. Those folks don't really understand how this works.
My case was a slam dunk summary judgement. The "excessive force" was fully documented by my cruiser camera. It's incredibly clear that I did not violate the plaintiff's civil rights when I arrested her.
Despite this being an "easy winner" for me, the case took 17 months to resolve. Check out the photo below. Those documents are the 24 separate motions (more than 400 total pages) the plaintiff filed in the case. My attorneys had to answer every one of them.
The city is paying the attorney bill on this one, but could you imagine how much money they are paying good lawyers to answer all of the plaintiff's spurious allegations? If the city paid less than $50,000 on the defense so far, I would be absolutely shocked. The total is probably more like double that amount.
If any of you get sued after a self defense incident, you will probably not have the incredible video footage of the incident to defend you. Any of the scenarios for which you might get sued are likely to be far more ambiguous than my simple arrest. Your legal defense expenses won't be covered by your employer.
Do you have a spare $50K laying around to defend yourself? Are you prepared to deal with a multi-year period of time when your life is in limbo before your case gets seen by a judge?
Don't take this part of the legal process lightly. There is a tremendous potential for expensive consequences even in the most basic and justified of shooting/self protection incidents. Don't be too eager to shoot or physically fight with anyone if you can avoid it. I don't want any of you to end up $150 million dollars poorer unless that's your only option.