When the residents of Fort Lee, and neighboring burbs, decide what happened to them, there -- is NOT going to stay silently hidden, there.
Six Bergen County residents file class-action lawsuits over GWB scandal
by Kibret Markos, Staff Writer, The Record, northjersey.com -- Jan 9, 2014
Six Bergen County residents filed a class-action lawsuit Thursday against Governor Christie, his sacked aide and his two former appointees to the Port Authority, claiming they got stuck in traffic, arrived late for work and lost their pay when a politically motivated lane closure at the George Washington Bridge clogged the borough with traffic in September.
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Calling the scheme a “conspiracy” and a “willful, wanton, arbitrary, and egregious official misconduct,” the lawsuit filed in federal court in Newark seeks damages on behalf of six residents of Fort Lee, Edgewater and Leonia.
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"The defendants in this case were looking to do some serious damage to the residents of Fort Lee. By crippling the town on the first day of school, that's exactly what they accomplished and that's what they're getting sued for," Arnold said. "My client Joy Galicki suffered a severe panic attack as the result of being a "trapped rat" in gridlock for almost an hour. The rest of my clients plus tens of thousands of other people sustained the economic damages the defendants were looking to cause."
But unlike Vegas, when you lose your wages in New Jersey,
due to someone's ill intent -- Somebody just might have to pay you back ...
When ... can you sue City Hall -- and possibly hope to win?
Well apparently when City Hall is no longer "acting in good faith" in carrying out their duties ... who knew?
How to Sue Over the Christie Bridge Scandal and Win
Did you miss out on a day’s pay, per chance?
by John Culhane, slate.com -- Jan 14 2014
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The losses for these six plaintiffs may well amount to peanuts, but in the aggregate, economic loss claims of this sort would quickly add up because of the sheer volume of traffic that was affected. The George Washington Bridge carries about 300,000 vehicles each day. Think about how the five days of long delays might have affected commerce: deliveries that were late or missed from trucks that couldn’t get through, lost clients or wages for people who couldn’t get to work.
Would they win? Usually, suits like these fail, because courts don’t like claims for pure economic loss. But in the case of the bridge tie-up, success is much likelier, for a few reasons.
First, the plaintiffs would be more likely to clear the hurdle of government immunity. Like most states, New Jersey and its state officials are immune from many claims for which ordinary citizens would be liable -- as long as they are acting in good faith. If the bureaucrats had just misjudged whether they really needed a traffic pattern study, they’d be off the hook -- that’s just an honest mistake. Here, though, the leaked emails make the lane closures seem like the very definition of bad faith. And officials who acted maliciously in causing the tie-up could be held personally liable. New Jersey itself might not be, because criminal and malicious acts are the responsibility of the individual, not the state. But even that’s not a sure bet, since the state can also be liable for negligently supervising its employees.
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Bad actors, may translate into bad legal standing (according to slate.com).
So the next time Chris Christie (or his employees) cause you to lose a day's wage -- call a lawyer, join a Class Action.
It just might make your day. They were YOUR Wages -- surrendered ... and you didn't even get to place a bet ...