Using your First Amendment right to protest is often commendable, but protests can turn dangerous for various reasons. Regardless of the issues involved in these protests, our attorneys are concerned with your safety. If you are hurt while protesting or by protestors, it is important to understand your rights and who you can and cannot sue.
Under Pennsylvania law, assault and battery are grounds for a lawsuit, and if you can often sue people for assault and battery. If you were injured by dangerous premises or negligent security, that may also be grounds for a lawsuit, depending on the situation. In some cases, claims against protest organizers might also progress, but this is currently an open legal question for some specific contexts. Lastly, suing the police for injuries is possible, but it is difficult because of qualified immunity.
Call our Philadelphia personal injury lawyers at The Reiff Law Firm today at (215) 709-6940 for a free case review.
When Protestors Can Sue for Injuries in Philadelphia
Various protests are fueled by humanitarian, religious, and political views on many sides of any given issue, but our Bensalem personal injury lawyers have one primary focus: helping injury victims get compensation for what happened to them. To this end, we may be able to help you sue for compensation if you were injured while protesting in any of the following situations:
Assault and Battery by Others/Counter-Protestors
If you were protesting peacefully and you were attacked by a random person or by a counter-protestor, you may be entitled to sue them directly for assault and battery. Just because they do not like what you are saying or how you are saying it does not give them the right to physically assault you.
A claim for assault requires showing that they put you in apprehension of immediate injury, while a claim for battery requires showing that they actually did injure you or touch you in an offensive way. Usually, both claims are filed together. This means you can sue for someone spitting on you, striking you, spraying you, or otherwise injuring you intentionally.
This lawsuit is separate from any criminal charges that you might be able to seek against the assailant.
Other Intentional Torts
If you are otherwise the victim of an intentional tort, you can also sue for that. A “tort” is like the civil version of a crime, and assault and battery are two of the most common intentional torts. However, you can also sue for things like false imprisonment or intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Dangerous Premises
If you were allowed to be in a location and were injured because of unsafe premises, you could be entitled to sue the property owner. For example, a protest at your own college or a picket line outside your workplace is somewhere you might have lawful access to, and the property owner has a duty to make that premises safe for people. If they intentionally put out traps or dangers, failed to clear ice and snow, or left dangerous conditions on stairs, patios, or other surfaces, they could be responsible to you for injuries you faced in a slip and fall or from other accidents.
When Victims of Injuries from a Protest Can Sue Protestors in Philadelphia
No matter how passionate protestors might be, the law does not allow them to commit acts of violence against others. In the same way that a protestor can sue for assault and battery by another party, people injured by assault and battery from a protestor often have the right to sue their assailants as well.
People may also be able to sue protestors who set up dangerous conditions on premises to prevent interference with their protest. For example, icing down a sidewalk or setting up an unstable barricade that collapses on you might be unreasonable, forming the grounds for an injury lawsuit.
In any case, identifying and locating the protestor who caused the injuries might be difficult unless you can get the assault on video. This lawsuit is separate from any criminal charges that might be pressed against the protestor.
Are Organizations Liable for Injuries During Protests?
There are at least three possible ways that an organization might be liable for injuries sustained during a protest:
A Protest Organization Failed to Create a Safe Environment
Some protests are set up like concerts, with a venue providing space for speakers, performances, and crowds. Much like a concert or other event, it is up to the venue and the organization putting on the event to keep the place safe for guests. Issues such as negligent security or dangerous premises might allow victims of injuries to sue the organizers/venue for injuries.
Negligent Security by Premises Owner
When protests are permitted by the property owners, it is often up to them to determine where the protestors are allowed to be and to take steps to keep others safe on their premises. If a protest gets out of hand and causes a danger to others, it is possible that injury victims could have a claim against the property owner for negligent security.
Suing Protest Organizers
A recent Supreme Court Case called McKesson v. Doe (2024) has permitted someone who was hit with a rock at a protest to move forward with a claim against the organizer of the protest even though he was not the one who threw the rock. This case did not hear the claim on its merits yet, but the fact that it was allowed to go forward signals that this Supreme Court may be open to allowing protest organizers to be sued for injuries that protestors cause, even if the organizer did not condone or incite the violence.
Can You Sue the Police for Injuries at a Protest in Philadelphia
It is possible to sue the police for battery or for other injuries sustained during an arrest or while clearing a protest in what’s called a Section 1983 lawsuit – a lawsuit for a violation of your civil rights. However, police will often be protected by “qualified immunity.”
This immunity allows police to avoid liability if they did not already know that what they did was a violation of your rights, which usually requires having a previous case on the books where a court deemed the same actions unlawful. Police will also often be able to claim their actions were based on officer safety or self-defense, arguing that it was legal to cause your injuries.
As such, lawsuits against police are unlikely to succeed, but our lawyers can analyze your case in a free case review to determine whether it can move forward and what your chances of success might be.
Call Our Injury Lawyers in Philadelphia Today
If you were injured at a protest, call our West Chester, PA personal injury attorneys today at The Reiff Law Firm at (215) 709-6940 for a free case evaluation.
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