DEA forgets man, left to rot in a holding cell for days

[Darth Nostril]

Yeah that should have gone into the general police fuckwittery thread, it has no bearing on this case.

Seriously DA your hard on for finding the police at fault hurts your cause.

[Dominus Atheos]

Mr Bean was talking about the people who ran the DEA facility not being able to get hired anywhere else which made me think of this story.

Anyway, the thread has changed into a discussion of law enforcement officers abusing people and not getting punished, so it's directly relevant even besides as a reply to Bean.

[Sea Skimmer]

He's only suing for $20 million? I'd be suing for $1 million a minute.

Settlement man. The DEA might well outright settle for 20 million, or something close to that amount, because it could be cheaper then paying for government lawyers through multiple trials. The plaintiff lawyers would take ~60%, but he'd still have enough to retire on. If he sued for 7.2 billion he might well win in court, but then it'd be appeal after appeal and years and years before he saw any money, if any ever. His lawyers would also be reluctant in that case to work purely for a percentage because of how drawn out the timescale becomes to collect. I'm not sure on the relevant law in this case, but often judges can reduce huge jury awards too.

Just for a twisted comparison, its been a topic here before, every US presidential administration has to put a value of human life. They have to do that because the EPA and several other government agencies have to by law balance the cost of rules intended to protect life vs the value of human life. They put that value in the range of 7 million bucks a person these days. And its not common for juries to award sums of money vastly in excess of that kind of money either. At the end of that day what are you going to do, make a political point with a possibly futile legal case, or ensure you collect them actual cash?

[Flagg]

He's only suing for $20 million? I'd be suing for $1 million a minute.

Settlement man. The DEA might well outright settle for 20 million, or something close to that amount, because it could be cheaper then paying for government lawyers through multiple trials. The plaintiff lawyers would take ~60%, but he'd still have enough to retire on. If he sued for 7.2 billion he might well win in court, but then it'd be appeal after appeal and years and years before he saw any money, if any ever. His lawyers would also be reluctant in that case to work purely for a percentage because of how drawn out the timescale becomes to collect. I'm not sure on the relevant law in this case, but often judges can reduce huge jury awards too.

Just for a twisted comparison, its been a topic here before, every US presidential administration has to put a value of human life. They have to do that because the EPA and several other government agencies have to by law balance the cost of rules intended to protect life vs the value of human life. They put that value in the range of 7 million bucks a person these days. And its not common for juries to award sums of money vastly in excess of that kind of money either. At the end of that day what are you going to do, make a political point with a possibly futile legal case, or ensure you collect them actual cash?

I apologize, I thought I had responded to this in length, but instead I spent 45 minutes writing a reply that is now lost to the void due to me hitting "preview" again instead of "submit" which happens a good 1/4 of the time now everywhere since my brains (It's due to my medications and hopefully a "pain pump" will at least partially alleviate the issue. I've also began using WordPad to save progress, but I got lazy ) now consist of cottage cheese and French fried potaters mmmm hmmm.

Anyway the TL;DR version is: You make that demand to make a specific point and to ask for so much fucking money that they poop themselves a little and the counter offer will be the max they are allowed by their superiors.

[Ralin]

Or they decide that you really just want to grind your axe and they fort up instead of making a counter offer, or the judge decides to disallow it and now he's annoyed with you or probably a bunch of other things that don't immediately spring to mind but that he and his legal team would be in a better position to judge than us.