Hanrahan wins settlement in First Amendment-false arrest lawsuit
against Amtrak
Distributed by
The DC Statehood Green Party
http://www.dcstatehoodgreen.org
DEBBY HANRAHAN WINS SETTLEMENT IN FIRST AMENDMENT-FALSE ARREST LAWSUIT AGAINST AMTRAK;
$35,000 TO GO TO LAWYERS GUILD, C.O. GROUP
June 5, 2007
Contacts:
Debby Hanrahan, (202) 462-2054
Jim Klimaski, Klimaski & Associates PC, (202) 296-5600
http://klimaskilaw.lawoffice.com/
Long-time D.C. Statehood Green Party activist Debby Hanrahan has won a settlement in her First
Amendment-false arrest lawsuit against Amtrak (The National Railroad Passenger Corp.) and has
directed that almost all of the settlement proceeds other than lawyers' fees and her
expenses go to two local civil liberties organizations. The two organizations will receive
a total of $35,000.
Hanrahan, 68, a leading participant in the No DC Taxes for Baseball coalition which opposed public
financing of a new baseball stadium, was arrested without any warning by Amtrak police in the Grand
Concourse in Washington, D.C.'s Union Station on November 22, 2004 during a public rally promoting
the naming of the Washington Nationals baseball team. For quietly holding a poster opposing
public financing, she was charged with unlawful entry and jailed for 28 hours before her
release on her own recognizance after a court appearance.
Hanrahan said that a portion of the settlement will go for fees incurred by the law firm of
veteran civil liberties attorney James Klimaski. Klimaski's firm took the case on a pro bono basis
and spent hundreds of hours in legal work before Klimaski negotiated the settlement with Amtrak
earlier this month. The suit was filed in 2005 in D.C. Superior Court, after Hanrahan's
criminal attorney, Paul J. Riley, successfully got the criminal charge dropped in January 2005.
After lawyers' fees, Hanrahan received $45,000. To help other persons falsely arrested in free
speech and other civil liberties cases, Hanrahan has directed that $25,000 of this go to the D.C.
Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and $10,000 to the Center on Conscience and War's MCN Legal
Fund, an organization that assists military conscientious objectors. The remaining $10,000 of
the settlement will primarily cover expenses incurred by Hanrahan in her criminal case,
as well as deposition and expert witness costs in the civil case.
Hanrahan said that it was her intention from before she filed this suit to contribute proceeds
other than attorneys' fees and criminal and civil case expenses to progressive legal organizations.
"First, I wanted to show Amtrak through this suit that the First Amendment applies at public
meetings held on its publicly-owned [U.S. Department of Transportation] space," said
Hanrahan. "Secondly, I wanted a settlement or verdict large enough to make meaningful
allocations to organizations that stand up for people whose rights to freedom of speech,
assembly and conscience have been violated."
The offending poster Hanrahan held called attention in cartoon form to the spiraling cost
of the stadium, then at $614 million (and now at least $100 million higher). The poster showed a
beaming, top-hatted, cigar-chomping, "fat-cat" team owner with then-Mayor Anthony Williams
exulting over the expensive new stadium amid crumbling public schools and libraries and
a shut-down D.C. General Hospital.
The charge against Hanrahan was dismissed seven weeks and two court appearances after her arrest.
In subsequent proceedings to expunge Hanrahan's arrest record, the U.S. Attorney's office
acknowledged in a written filing "that this court would find, by clear and convincing evidence that
[Hanrahan] did not commit the offense for which she had been charged." As NBC4 reporter Tom
Sherwood wrote on the NBC4 web site and in The Current newspapers at the time of her
arrest: Hanrahan "held aloft a sign criticizing the baseball deal, but was not disruptive."
"I hope this case and settlement send yet anot her reminder to police and public officials that
they cannot infringe on individuals' free speech rights because they don't like the message,"
Hanrahan said. "I was attending a public rally in about as public a place as you can imagine, to
which members of the public were invited through radio and newspaper announcements, and which
featured on the stage Mayor Williams and several members of the D.C. Council and Sports and
Entertainment Commission. My 'crime' was being out of sync with the message of the rally, and
for that I was given no warning and was grabbed in a painful shoulder hold by an Amtrak
policeman, pulled out of the rally, arrested, charged with trespassing, incarcerated for 28
hours, and required to give a urine sample in the presence of both male and female court
and U.S. Marshal personnel. And I had my free-speech rights substantially chilled as I faced this
criminal charge during a key time period in the baseball stadium financing fight with a big
mid-December [2004] Council vote scheduled."
Hanrahan praised the work of Klimaski and his associates in the civil case and of Riley in the
criminal case. She said Klimaski, despite having a small firm without the deep pockets of major
D.C. law firms, "nevertheless took a big financial risk in taking my case because he
recognized that my arrest was an outrageous violation of my civil liberties, and that Amtrak
had to be shown that there are consequences for arbitrarily arresting nonviolent protesters at
public meetings held on public property."
Contacts:
Debby Hanrahan, (202) 462-2054
Jim Klimaski, Klimaski & Associates PC, (202) 296-5600
http://klimaskilaw.lawoffice.com/
The DC Statehood Green Party
http://www.dcstatehoodgreen.org