Civil Liberties Defense Center

I. OVERVIEW AND DISCLAIMER

I developed this treatise originally in aid of San Francisco Bay Area political activists, but it also has general application. Bear in mind, though, that local, state, and even federal law differ regionally, so please do not treat this primer as a substitute for individual and regionally specific research and legal advice. For example, Section 1983 of the Federal Civil Rights Act (42 U.S.C. § 1983), the principal federal statute under which you will sue to redress violations by officials of your constitutional rights, does not contain its own statute of limitations, i.e. the deadline by which you must file a lawsuit. Rather, Section 1983 borrows the states’ various statutes of limitations, and those (aptly named) “SOLs” differ state by state . II. A “CIVIL SUIT”

If you are a victim of police abuse, you might be considering whether to file a civil lawsuit (sometimes called a civil “action” or “complaint”). In a civil suit, you are the plaintiff, and the police officers