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ta988today at 1:42 PM1 replyview on HN

search for eminent domain in the us, it can be much worse than just $100


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mothballedtoday at 1:44 PM

I was billed about $1000 when US police took me to ER in cuffs and claimed (made up) I was secretly smuggling drugs up my ass.

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They got a warrant afterwards which they somehow applied retroactively. I found out police had systematically been doing this to people and in fact already sued for this. The hospital had also already been put on notice after ACLU sued in a different state.

I contacted several lawyers and the ACLU (since they already had posted notice for this same thing). ACLU was radio silence for the entire couple years of the statue of limitations, so no help there. The best shot I had was contacting a couple lawyers who specifically sued against the same people who had done it before. They lost the last time due to the courts considering the hospital as effectively deputized as federal officers while it happened. The courts/state got around the lawsuit by claiming it is medical care whenever the warrant issue come up, then claim it is a LEO search whenever the medical aspects of the search were challenged, creating a catch 22.

All lawyers involved told me they'd given up such cases (impossible to win). The prior, almost identical but even worse case (woman finger-raped by doctors without a warrant) was lost due to the catch-22 of it being a "search" whenever the medical aspects were challenged and being "medical care" whenever the search aspects were challenged. This meant it was effectively impossible to challenge it from any available angle.

As for the bill, I never paid it. Still chased by debt collectors for it though.

Basically if federal officers involved you are fucked. Lon Horiuchi straight up sniped an innocent woman holding a baby in her arms, over a husband's failure to appear in court, and even he couldn't be held accountable.

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