Amazon lost ..

6 civil forfeiture actions; $ returned 4 guilty pleas dismissed or vacated Civil racketeering, fraud case tossed before trial DOJ investigation ended, no charges Husband won victory in his 1st lawsuit against Amazon

Yet Amazon hasn't fired its lawyers. Wild.

This story is wild. I discovered it today. I must be living in a cave.

Do authorities break the buildings with a buldodger in US as well?

We in India have a lot of incidents where under the law of civil forfeiture buildings get demolished by a buldodger.

A buddy of mine is a lawyer and he represented someone who had $40k taken from them during a traffic stop.

The crux of the police case was that the drug dog "alerted" to the presence of narcotics (there was no narcotics found, and the guy told my buddy that the money was from gambling winnings - sports betting - and that he didn't even use drugs of any kind ever).

Reviewing the body cams, there was nothing obvious the dog did....at one point the dog sort of paused for a second and cop immediately claimed "thats an alert!". My buddy, requested body cam from other stops to see if the alerts were similar but the cops said "every alert can be different".

Eventually the cops dropped the case, well they plea-bargained him down to a "non moving violation" and in exchange the cops got to keep $4k of the money, which the guy accepted because going to trail would've cost him twice that.

Quite a racket.

"If the property in question could otherwise be removed, destroyed, or concealed before a hearing, however, police can seize it without these steps." This is up to their discretion, right? I can see a lot of corruption happening because of how they read this.

My favorite paragraph:

Civil forfeiture started during the colonial years under British maritime law. If a ship owner violated custom laws, enforcement could seize ships and cargo even if the owner was difficult to capture.

added: Halima Culley bought a 2015 Nissan Altima for her son to use at college. He was pulled over by the police in 2019 and arrested when they found marijuana. They also seized Ms. Culley’s car. That same year, Lena Sutton lent her 2012 Chevrolet Sonic to a friend. He was stopped for speeding and arrested after the police found methamphetamine. Ms. Sutton’s car was also seized.