New York City to Pay $18 Million Over Convention Arrests New York City will pay nearly $18 million to settle civil rights lawsuits filed on behalf of roughly 1,600 people who claimed they were wrongfully swept up in mass arrests during the 2004 Republican National Convention, lawyers for the city and plaintiffs said on Wednesday. Many of those arrested during the convention, at which President George W. Bush was nominated for a second term, were detained in filthy cells with poor air quality in a former bus depot on a Hudson River pier, according to a complaint filed in the case. They included protesters, journalists and bystanders who were trapped on the sidewalk by police officers using mesh nets, according to the complaint. The settlement resolves claims by 430 individuals and a class action by about 1,200, the lawyers for the parties said. "No lawful protester should ever be treated like a criminal in New York City or anywhere else in the United States," said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represented a small group of plaintiffs. Her group called the agreement, which came after nine years of bitterly fought litigation, the "largest protest settlement" in the nation's history, a claim that could not immediately be verified. The plaintiffs will receive $10.3 million, for an average payout of $6,400, and $7.6 million will be paid to the plaintiff's lawyers, the city's Law Department said. A senior city lawyer, Celeste Koeleveld, said that "it was vitally important to defend the city in this litigation" but that it was also in "the best interest of those involved in this longstanding litigation to settle the remaining claims." The city admitted no fault in the settlement. The agreement was the product of "months of negotiations" by the plaintiffs" lawyers and the Bloomberg administration, the joint statement indicated. A handful of cases remain open. The federal judge in Manhattan overseeing the case, Richard J. Sullivan, in 2012 found that a group of more than 200 plaintiffs had been illegally arrested on Fulton Street, and in that ruling, he urged the parties to find a way "toward a speedy and just resolution" of the claims. Judge Sullivan must still approve the class-action settlement. The parties credited Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV for helping to guide the talks.