Cyclist sues New York Police Department over "malicious and outrageous" fines for jumping red lights, arguing officers are getting traffic law wrong
Cyclist sues New York Police Department over "malicious and outrageous" fines for jumping red lights, arguing officers are getting traffic law wrong
Direct link (PDF) to the class action complaint filed with the federal Southern District Court of New York.
This is certainly a different avenue than I expected for vindicating the rights of NYC cyclists, but is very welcome. Conventionally, when a law is enforced improperly, the matter is adjudicated and that settles the matter for the person in question. However, that does not necessarily set "legal precedence", which is the obligation for other courts and judges to rule in the same way.
To establish that a law is indeed being wrongly applied, someone would have to either appeal their case to the appellate court -- whose ruling would then set precedence for all the lower courts to follow -- or they file suit for "declaratory judgement", where a court is asked specifically to rule on the validity of some law, regulation, or contract. And that in-depth analysis would set precedence, because it specifically litigates the core legality of what's in question.
Declaratory judgement is what I thought would happen, but here, they've taken a different approach. Because the plaintiff posits that the law is clearly on their side -- with zero room for any other interpretation, bolstered by the fact that a judge dismissed the charge against the cyclist earlier -- they argue NYPD is operating unconstitutionally, violating whole swaths of people's rights.
After all, the issue isn't that some law conflicts with other laws, but that NYPD is systemically misapplying the wrong law against people conducting themselves lawfully. That's akin to constantly prosecuting pedestrians for a failure to use low-beams at night. So absurd it is, the plaintiffs claim, that it amounts to unconstitutional harassment.
Hence, they bring a class action claim to vindicate the constitutional right to not be falsely arrested (4th Amendment, NY Constitution, and common law), and the right to be free from malicious prosecution. Note that it's common to use a "scattergun" approach for lawsuits, in the hope that any one of these will stick.
With all that said, this is a bigger lift than "declaratory judgement" would have been, but unlike that process, this class action allows prior victims of NYPD's false arrests to recover some money from the city, if they join the class action. As with all class action suits, the defendant will challenge the class definition, likely arguing that not every class member suffered equal harm.
And that's possibly true: being dragged to court for an improper traffic citation affects people differently, whether they have to arrange child care for the day or whether they had to hire a lawyer or not. But the response to that would be: the harm suffered by the class was the constitutional rights that were trampled on. And it is very well settled that wrongly abridged constitutional rights, if for even a brief moment, is a cognizable harm that can be redressed in court.
I can't make much sense of this situation, if it's red then the walk sign should be in the other direction. Unless this was a scramble, in which case I think you shouldn't go because it's too crowded. Article says advance walk but not sure the exact setup.
I think that is the case with lights configured with an LPI (Leading Pedestrian Interval) where the automobile light is red but the walk sign in the parallel direction is on for a few seconds.
According to those rules, if there's no separate cyclist signal, cyclists facing a red light auto signal with walk pedestrian signal should briefly stop, then proceed with the pedestrians.
But then why would the judge throw it out?
The walk signal will be parallel to the flow of traffic. Therefore, yes, a red light for traffic would mean that pedestrians are crossing your path, not going with it.
There are intersections where all lights stay red, giving pedestrians a walk sign in all directions.
There are also intersections where the walk sign turns on before the light goes green.
In both cases, the cyclist still needs to yield to pedestrians, but it seems they'd be legally allowed to ride through the red if it's clear.
NYC is using "Leading Pedestrian Interval" on most intersections. This feature has been installed about 10 years ago. When the cross traffic light has turned red and your (the car driver's) traffic light is about to turn green, the pedestrian traffic light in the same direction turns green first. Your traffic light turns green a few seconds later, and the pedestrian light stays green. 15 seconds later, pedestrian light starts flashing red, and 30 seconds later both lights turn red at same time.
This few second advanced-pedestrian-green protects pedestrians from collisions with cars by allowing the squishy road users to saturate the crosswalk before the cars trying to make a right/left turn get a go. Cars making a turn have to wait. When both lights used to change green at same time, the drivers making a turn had too much temptation to just gun it across an intersection before the pedestrians reached the middle of it. NYC has very many intersections and very many pedestrians. This caused many collisions and injuries.
A 2019 city council law ammended the Administrative Code section 19-195 to clarify that bicyclists should use the advanced pedestrian green as well. This makes sense because bicyclists ride on the side of the road (in the right turn danger zone) and are in the squishy human category. NYPD hates bicyclists and ignores the law, pretending to "forget" it exists every time they write a citation violating it.
Only in USA: Cyclist breaks the law, and then sues state for getting a ticket.
Mr Esparza took the case to court and it was chucked out by a judge, leading to this lawsuit now hoping to stop NYPD fining cyclists over such incidents for good.
In other words, cyclist broken the law, got ticket, disputed it in court, and court decided ticket was issued correctly, so cyclist sues again. Lol
No, the cyclist followed the law, which states that cyclists should follow pedestrian signals if the traffic lights are red.
The article even includes a graphic published by the city describing the expected behavior.
The wording is a bit annoying.
The first court date was him appearing as he had been summoned by the ticket. THAT case was thrown out (he was found to have not broken a law)
He is now starting a class action lawsuit so that other cyclists affected can get some financial compensation as they were wrongfully fined. Many could have just paid the fine and not realized the ticket was incorrect.
If he had lost (the fine was found to be correct) and then decided to start a class action lawsuit anyway the lawsuit would almost immediately be dismissed
Rosa Parks was breaking the law, too. If the law is stupid or unconstitutional, suing is how you get a court to make that determination and strike the law.
In this case, the cyclists’ argument is that they are following the law and the NYPD is incorrectly citing them.
Never expect the bastards to know the laws they’re supposed to be enforcing.
The courts have ruled that the police need not know the law to enforce it, in Heien v. North Carolina. However they also hold that ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it for those of us that are subject to it, Ignorantia juris non excusat. So the public is expected to be more aware of legal minutia than the "trained" enforcers of that law.
Rules for thee, but not for mee.
It makes sense to a certain degree. Even lawyers are specialized and don't know all the entirety of the law.
This means that police has to be trained and supervised more because they essentially don't know what they're doing.