Linda Friend
A state administrative ban on signs in the public area of the state Capitol was later ruled unconstitutional.
There were 13 attorneys from the state Department of Justice working on the prosecution of Capitol protest tickets in January 2014. When asked what the tab was to prosecute these citations, Dana Brueck, the agency spokesperson at the time, said “there is no additional expense to taxpayers.”
“Representing the government is our job,” she added.
Even when a Dane County judge asked the DOJ to prepare a cost-benefit analysis on the continued prosecution of hundreds of tickets, he got nowhere. The DOJ submitted a response with no dollar figures.
But now taxpayers have been presented with a bill for some real cash. It could be just the start. In a June 9 decision, Dane County Judge Frank Remington awarded attorneys’ fees and damages to six people who were ticketed by Capitol police for protesting the Walker administration at the state Capitol in March 2011.
The plaintiffs, represented by attorney Jeff Scott Olson, were awarded damages ranging from $750 to $5,000 for “loss of liberty, emotional distress and inconvenience and injury to reputation.” There were also damages awarded for travel to a court appearance, lost wages and loss of a sign.
Four were also reimbursed for attorneys’ fees in amounts ranging from $1,280 to $4,000 per citation (these payments were for the lawyers who contested the original fines). All together, damages amounted to $21,150 and attorneys’ fees, $23,680.
Attorney General Brad Schimel, who was not in office at the time these tickets were issued or initially prosecuted, will appeal Remington’s ruling, says spokesperson Anne Schwartz.
Schwartz did not respond to requests for comment on the appeal or Remington’s ruling for damages and attorneys’ fees.
Olson says he is not surprised the state would appeal. “We expected that. They’ve got blatantly unconstitutional rules that people were cited under. And they’re having a hard time facing up to the fact that they have liability for damages to hundreds of people who were cited under unconstitutional rules.”
The cost to the state could grow exponentially, says Olson. He is now consulting with other lawyers about seeking damages and attorneys’ fees for hundreds of other protesters ticketed at the Capitol between March 2011 and September 2013.
“We haven’t filed actions for most of the people with damage claims because we were waiting to see what happened in this case and another,” says Olson, who also has a pending citation case in federal court case for journalist Dominic Salvia. Olson says future actions could include a class action suit or multiple claims in either federal or state court.
Olson is also looking at a second round of attorneys’ fees — his. And they will be in the “six figures” just on these six cases alone, he says.
He is seeking his fees under the U.S. Civil Rights Attorneys Fees Awards Act of 1976, which he says was passed to “enable people whose civil rights had been violated in ways that did not cause substantial damages, to obtain lawyers to pursue their cases, because Congress believed that vindication of our constitutional rights, even in small-damages cases, benefits everyone.”
Olson has 45 days in which to file his claim in circuit court.
According to records Isthmus obtained last year from the DOJ, the state issued nearly 800 tickets to protesters between March 2011 and September 2013, for a variety of administrative infractions. Nearly all of those ticketed asked for jury trials.
The DOJ’s Schwartz did not respond to a request for a status report on these tickets. But Brueck said in December 2014 there were still 125 forfeiture cases pending in circuit court and about the same number on appeal. Many of the cases in circuit court have since been dismissed.
People started flooding the Capitol in March 2011 to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s budget cuts and proposed elimination of collective bargaining rights for most public employees.
Between March 23 and 27, Olson’s clients — Jeremy Ryan, Lauri Marie Harty, Anne Mary Hoppe, Kathleen D. Hoppe, Jenna Brianne Pope and Valerie Rose Walesek — were cited for displaying signs in violation of state administrative code.
Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne dismissed all these tickets in May 2011. (The DOJ would later take over prosecution of similar tickets.)
In November 2011, Olson filed suit in circuit court on behalf of the protesters, asking that the administrative rule on signs be declared unconstitutional. He also sought injunctive relief and damages. Olson says he dropped the claim for injunctive relief when the Department of Administration changed its rule.
Plaintiff Walesek, who now lives in Florida, says she was willing to incur the cost of an attorney rather than pay her fines because of “principle.”
“I felt we hadn’t done anything wrong, and we could prove it.”
