Seattle WTO arrested may sue

Judge: WTO arrests lacked cause

By Christine Clarridge
Seattle Times staff reporter

E-mail this article

Print this article

Search archive




Seattle police who arrested World Trade Organization protesters four years ago had no probable cause to do so, a federal judge has ruled, possibly leaving the city vulnerable to damages from a class-action lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ruled Monday that police had no probable cause when they arrested 157 protesters at First Avenue and Broad Street on Dec. 1, 1999, during a WTO conference in Seattle.

Lawyers for the protesters contended that the city violated their clients' First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights with the arrests, according to Victoria Ni, an attorney with Trial Lawyers for Public Justice.

The First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech, and the Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures.

According to Ni, the protesters and onlookers were trapped, herded and arrested by the Seattle Police Department outside of an area that had been established as a no-protest zone during the convention.

According to court documents, the protesters contend that they were forced down the street and arrested by police, who made no effort to separate protesters from innocent bystanders.

In addition, lawyers for the protesters claim that every person arrested was booked into a holding center at Naval Station Puget Sound at Sand Point using the same photocopied arrest warrant, which contained inaccurate information.

For example, all the forms were signed by one police lieutenant who later acknowledged that he had not made a single arrest himself.

The judge said, however, that her ruling should not be interpreted to invalidate all mass arrests by police.

The city claims that members of the group were arrested for pedestrian interference only after they failed to disperse. Attorneys for the city could not be reached late yesterday.




The class-action lawsuit originally was filed in October 2000 on behalf of about 600 people. The claims of most of the original plaintiffs were dismissed in fall 2001 when U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Rothstein ruled the city had the right to create and enforce a no-protest zone during a state of emergency. City officials created the zone after some protesters clogged the streets and damaged some property.

But that ruling did not affect the claims of the 157 current plaintiffs, who were outside the no-protest zone at the time of their arrest, according to an assistant to Steve Berman, the protesters' lead attorney, who was brought in by Trial Lawyers for Public Justice.

Pechman took over the case after Rothstein left the court this year to head a national center for judicial education and research in Washington, D.C.

A trial is scheduled for next month, when protesters will have to prove the arrests were part of an official city policy, Ni said.

"We're going to show that the arrests were ratified and approved by the mayor or the chief of police," she said.

If the judge agrees, the issue of damages will be raised, she said. Ni wouldn't speculate on the amount of damages that might be sought.

"They were jailed for three to five days in substandard conditions, then released and never convicted of any crime," she said.