well I have some bittersweet news and the news is that we have now settled the creepy cop search case out of Putnam County West Virginia that's the case where my client had hidden surveillance cameras inside his house that caught cops sneaking around and searching the inside of his home and that is what sort of accidentally started my YouTube channel because I needed a way and we needed a way to get this video footage out there as quickly as possible which happened and that was my very first video before I get into the details a subscriber sent me this handy dandy uh cigar lighting material so let me get my cigar going [Music] I've posted about this case many times it's been sort of a roller coaster it's probably been one of the one of my favorite cases that I've handled in my career not because it was the biggest case financially because it was interesting it was highly interesting this is a topic that most of us can agree on it's the sanctity of one's home it's the foundation of the Constitution the fact that we didn't want our founding fathers didn't want the British going in the homes of American citizens the Fourth Amendment the very foundation in the home is the most protected place under the Fourth Amendment so I really like those types of cases and this one there just won't be hopefully anyways another one like it it just had all the ingredients of just a super interesting and Sensational case and I'm really shocked that it took several years to bring to a conclusion it just seemed to me like that this was something that they would have come to me early on and said look let's make this thing go away but for some reason they didn't so it went on and on and on as many of you have watched through the during the last couple of years on my YouTube channels I've discussed this case and we've we've had all sorts of drama fly back and forth with video depositions with documents marked confidential the officers ended up pleading the Fifth Amendment during their depositions one of them 111 times so it's been a roller coaster case for me for my client for the defendant officers no doubt it's sort of Bittersweet now that it's come to a conclusion but I'll explain why that is so anyways the case settled for the amount of 185 thousand dollars now I know what some of you may be thinking [Music] but we've seen on these YouTube videos and in these news reports you know million dollar cases and seven million dollar cases and 10 million dollar lawsuit things like that there's a difference between a million dollar lawsuit and what actually happens if you follow it to the end okay a case like this a Fourth Amendment violation the creepy cop search case all right they break into a house without a warrant violate the Fourth Amendment they don't arrest anybody they don't hurt anybody there's really zero dollars of Damages they push in an air conditioner climb in the window we have zero dollars damages what do we have constitutional injury what is that worth I don't know at the end of the day a jury will get to decide what that's worth if they want to award damages or not a jury could award a dollar for a Fourth Amendment violation they could award ten dollars they could award a million dollars you just don't know and you can't actually say well ladies and gentlemen the jury we think you should award 750 000 in this case we feel that that would be fair for this constitutional violation you're not allowed to say that so you never know what a jury is going to do jury could you know they may make twenty thousand dollars a year thirty thousand dollars a year they may not want to award five hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars or even a hundred thousand dollars a lot of what you're negotiating with before trial in section 1983 cases is is attorney's fees where there's no actual damages no medical bills no nobody's lost a leg or anything like that the other side knows that if you win they're going to have to pay or likely are going to have to pay your reasonable attorney fees and expenses so in a case that takes a year a litigate or a couple years to litigate that could end up being six figures very easily so that's kind of what they're negotiating with for instance there was a case that recently settled in Florida that the ACLU litigated and I think there was like twenty thousand dollars awarded to the actual plaintiff or something like that and it was like 600 thousand dollars in attorney's fees for four years of litigation so those sort these sorts of fourth amendment constitutional cases really your your biggest damages are attorney's fees so here we were able to get them up and it wasn't easy it wasn't easy they started very low and it took two separate mediations to get them there but they finally came up to 185 000 and here's why we couldn't walk away from that here's why I couldn't let my client walk away from that is because what they were going to do is we were going to win the case they did not have a warrant they didn't have any exigent circumstances or other excuse such as consent a landlord can't consent for instance to to people going into attendance house or law enforcement so we were going to win on at least some of some of the counts what they can do and what they were probably going to do is since they were willing to pay 185 000 they would do what's called an offer of judgment and what that means is they basically tell the court we're willing to pay this amount if the plaintiff will accept it and what that means is if the plaintiff does not accept that 185 thousand dollars instead chooses to go forward to trial then potentially the plaintiff if the jury doesn't award that much money or more it's going to have to be on the hook for the legal fees for the other side in court costs and judges just after years and years of doing this I know that the federal judges in a fourth amendment case with no medical bills no injuries if they were to hear that my client did not accept 185 000 or 200 000 in a case with no damages and made that judge bring in a jury and try a case over that that would not turn out well most Fourth Amendment cases have settled for way less than that in fact I don't know if there's another West Virginia purely Fourth Amendment search and seizure cases settled for for more money than that so I think it was is a fair amount I always would like to get more I'm pretty happy with the number all right it also seems appropriate to send this case writing off into the sunset with a good banjo tune bear with me I was much better at one time before I came down with rheumatoid arthritis and if you don't like it I'll give you your money back here so you get what you pay for [Music] foreign well thanks for following along with this case and uh All Pro remember freedom is scary deal with it [Music]