U.S. Federal Judge Emmet G. Sullivan issued final approval to an $8.25 million class action settlement of an eight-year-long and hard-fought litigation battle over the mass arrests of nearly 400 people in Pershing Park in Washington, D.

A federal judge gave final approval Wednesday to a $13.7 million settlement between the District and people who were picked up in a mass arrest during a 2000 protest near the World Bank and International Monetary Fund buildings.

The D.C. government and a nonprofit civil rights organization have settled a class-action lawsuit brought by hundreds of protesters and bystanders arrested during a downtown demonstration in 2002. The District agreed to pay $8.

The District of Columbia will pay $8.25 million to settle a class action brought by protesters rounded up in mass arrests during the 2002 Pershing Park demonstrations. It would bring an end to nearly eight years of litigation.

Video from MyFox 5 Washington DC, reporting on the historic settlement of the false arrest case dating back to September 27, 2002.

After more than seven years of class action litigation, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund today is pleased to announce a victorious settlement on behalf of a class of nearly 400 persons who were arrested in Pershing Park in September 2002.

D.C. AG Peter Nickles has reached a settlement in one of the two remaining Pershing Park cases. The deal, which came together last night, includes a District payout of approximately $8.25 million to the roughly 400 plaintiffs in the Barham class action lawsuit.

On September 27, 2002, D.C. Police surrounded some 400 individuals in Pershing Park. Those individuals were rounded up without warning, arrested, and transferred to the police academy where they were hogtied for hours.

Retired federal judge Stanley Sporkin has issued an investigative report on the disappearance of evidence related to the false mass arrests at the September 2002 IMF / World Bank protests in Washington, D.