UC-Davis Pepper Spray Suit settled for $1 million
ByThe lawsuit filed by students against the University Of California Board Of Regents for hitting the anti-Wall Street student protestors at Davis campus with pepper sprays is finally resolved after both the parties reached a settlement.
According to the attorneys involved in the case, University of California officials have agreed to pay $1 million to settle the lawsuit.
The terms of the settlement filed in court Wednesday says that each of the 21 students and recent graduates from the campus who sued the university regents over the November 2011 incident will get $30,000 and a personal letter of apology from UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi.
Plaintiffs' attorney fees of $250,000 will also be covered under the deal.
The suit was filed in the month of February by 21 plaintiffs - 19 students and two former students - who were pepper-sprayed after they refused to comply with campus police to disperse during a protest against rising tuition costs, among other issues.
The students' federal lawsuit accused UC Davis of infringing their rights to free speech and freedom of assembly and sought an injunction 'to prevent repetition of such a response to a non-violent protest.'
It also sought compensatory and punitive damages 'against the individual perpetrators of the illegal acts and their superiors who ordered, directed and/or committed this outrageous conduct.'
"I want the university and the police to understand what they did wrong," UC Davis undergraduate Ian Lee said in a statement Wednesday.
"I was demonstrating because of rising tuition hikes and privatization of the university. Then we faced police brutality in response. I felt like the university silenced me," he said.
Now, with the issue being settled students are expecting to put the settlement money into their academic endeavours.
Lee later told at a press conference he would use the money for tuition fee and others were also planning to the same.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which represented the plaintiffs, said the pepper-sprayed students were so traumatized after the incident that they reported panic attacks and falling grades.
The Davis settlement, which hasn't been approved by court yet , also sets aside a $100,000 pool to pay up to $20,000 each for anyone who joins a class action lawsuit and can prove they were either arrested or directly pepper-sprayed.
The campus police officers directly involved in the incident will not face criminal charges.
SOURCE: Reuters