On the courthouse beat

News about a couple of lawsuits caught my eye recently. In one case, a payday is coming to the poor young man whose life was shattered by one of the jackboot goons that Mudface Caligula sent to Portland during the 2020 mayhem at the federal courthouse.

A protester, whose injury left him permanently disabled during the 2020 protests and civil unrest in Portland, will receive a $7.65 million settlement from the U.S. Department of Justice.

A deputy U.S. Marshal shot Donavan LaBella in the head with a less-than-lethal munition outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland on July 11, 2020. The incident has left LaBella, who at the time was 26, with a condition known as frontal lobe syndrome, which affects brain functioning processes like social behavior and language.

Attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice who represented the officer blamed the chaos of that evening and said the deputy marshal – identified only as John Doe 1 – used “reasonable and privileged” force and blamed the incident on the gas mask the officer wore, and argued that it made it difficult to aim the launcher when the officer fired at LaBella.

There's plenty of documentary evidence of the whole horrible incident. The kid was across the street from the courthouse, posing a threat to no one. No one should have been firing anything at him. And if the Chad Wolf stormtrooper had been in the right, no one would be paying the fellow $7.65 million.

In the other suit, another one of the clowns who got canned from the OLCC after being busted in the Bourbongate scandal a couple of years ago is now suing the taxpayers for $1.25 million, because folks, he's the real victim here.

On Feb. 10, Chris Mayton, the agency’s former distilled spirits director—a job that put him at the center of the OLCC’s handling of high-end whiskeys at issue in the scandal—filed suit in Marion County Circuit Court against the state of Oregon, the OLCC and various individual state employees involved in the release of agency records concerning Mayton....

The legal claim Mayton’s attorney Michelle Kerin makes is that the state violated Mayton’s right to privacy by releasing records to The Oregonian, which it did under the state’s public records law. Those records included details of Mayton vomiting after drinking shots at an industry gathering in Colorado in 2019, an outcome the lawsuit attributes to a post-surgical medication interacting unexpectedly with alcohol....

“As a result of defendants’ unlawful conduct, Mayton has suffered substantial economic damages,” the lawsuit concludes. “Most obviously, he lost a job at OLCC that he enjoyed and for which he would have continued to be compensated at least at his 2023 rate. Moreover, as a result of defendants’ unlawful conduct, Mayton is now effectively unemployable in his chosen field.”

Mayton's not alone. At least a couple of his fellow finaglers have also sued or threatened to do so.

Public employees in Oregon are pretty amusing. They all think they deserve a big check for nothing when  they're being shown the door. I don't get called for jury duty any more, but I'd love to sit on a jury hearing the OLCC dudes' cases. The verdict would be quick.