Lawyer Sues for $700K After His Arrest for Failing to Show ID in Courthouse
A Maryland lawyer in a hurry to file some briefs decided to take a stand when an officer at the appeals court in Annapolis asked to see his ID.
Norman Christopher Usiak refused, the Baltimore Sun reports. His resulting arrest spurred Usiak to file a $700,000 lawsuit claiming false arrest, false imprisonment and assault.
Being forced to show an ID “is the antithesis of access to a free court system,” Usiak, a Frederick, Md., lawyer, told the newspaper. “I took a stand. It was offensive to me.”
According to a police report on the June 2007 incident, Usiak gave a different reason for refusing to show ID: He had left his driver’s license in his car and didn’t feel like walking back to retrieve it. He was wearing dark pants and a white T-shirt at the time, a look described by the newspaper as “un-lawyerly” and the officer as “disheveled.”
After his refusal, Usiak says, he was cuffed, left in a hot police car until he vomited, and transported to the police station where he was cuffed to a basement pipe before being fingerprinted, the story reports. Prosecutors later dropped the charges.
