Court Case Wrap-up, October 30

Another week gone, a very difficult week in the nation, with deaths of two Black people at the hands of police, one in Philadelphia a few days ago and last night’s death across the river from Portland, in Vancouver Washington. Local cases have been relatively quiet of late, but we are starting to watch a few new cases and have a few updates to get out there.

State Court Cases, Civil Cases

While there’s no changes in any of the protest related tort claims against the city, in the McLain v. Swinney case Alan Swinney’s attorneys have filed their appearance. Honestly unsurprisingly to me, it’s Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Oliveros of the Oliveros Law Group. Mr. Wolfe has previously represented Mr. Swinney in his ongoing criminal case, and both of them are representing Ms. Bailey as she defends against her stalking case (more on that later). In the same vein, in the $1.25 million suit against Swinney, Wyatt and Willis, he has the same lawyers. Admittedly, I did not anticipate seeing the same two lawyers covering four cases on the list that I’m watching.

In the Evans v. City of Portland case, a class action brought by the People’s Law Project and first broke by us here, made it’s way back into the county court earlier this month after addressing concerns in federal court. The city has just made it’s affirmative defenses against the amended complaint, an early step in what is likely to be a long and drawn out case.

The last case in this section is one that I’ve been following for some time, but after another outlet reported on the story, I’ve decided to go ahead and make more of the information I have public. It’s a stalking order between Rhododendron restaurant owner Jolynne Milone and cigar shop co-owner Dixie Bailey. Ms. Bailey’s name is likely familiar to some due to her friendship with Alan Swinney and her connection with various flag wave and Back the Blue events in the last few months. A lot of things have already happened with the case, and in between the end of the hearing and the judge making his decision, even more evidence has come out about the hearing, forcing another day in court.

State Court Cases, Criminal Cases

Our first case is the oft-mentioned Oregon v. Swinney case, where Mr. Swinney’s counsel is asking for a reduction in his bail from the $534k that it’s currently set at. The hearing for that motion is Monday at 3pm, and we plan to be there with a report immediately after the hearing.

Two new cases that are being added to the list come from a protest that occurred in Salem on September 7th, where video has shown what appears to be several “alt-right” protesters assaulting a Black Lives Matter protester. Both of these cases, Oregon v. Wolfskill and Oregon v. Parker are scheduled for plea hearings next week, and we will work on following up with these cases as they develop.

‘Cider Riot’ Cases

As a tiny update, the consolidated case has had a scheduling call this week and nothing is expected to happen until at least early May. The one exception to that would be that Mr. Gibson has filed a suit in federal court alleging that the city is discriminating against him by maintaining charges against him while adopting a policy of not charging protesters for the same crime that he is charged with at this time.

I would note, however, that while the charges are the same between his and some BLM protest charges, that’s about where the similarities end. His charges arise out of a separate incident that happened over a year before any of the protests going on now, and while recent riot charges have been made directly by the police, in his case the charge came from a grand jury indictment process where evidence was provided to a jury and they agreed that the charges had merit..