Legal Commentary

Last Friday?s party-turned-riot in Eugene, Oregon was a pricey one. Over 400 people strong, it took 50 police officers to disperse the bottle-throwing, car-window breaking, street-sign-vandalizing crowd. The total cost, including tear gas, police overtime, sign replacement, and clean up, exceeded $10,000. The neighborhood hosting the event is packed with University of Oregon student renters, for whom civil disobedience appears to be a rite of passage. The incident marked the 2-year anniversary of a similar upheaval in the same neighborhood and the 5th major outburst in this particular area near the university in the past 8 years. The Fall 2002 riot (yes, there was one in the spring as well) resulted in an estimated $40,000 in damages ? a reasonable sum for a mob of 1500. These gatherings all seem to begin in an alcohol-infused, festive way and to end with police officers in riot gear.

Clearly, Eugene has been getting lots of practice at quelling student riots. Is there a way, however, to stop the riots from recurring? Perhaps, communal responsibility would help. This was once the approach in many states and for nearly 200 years in England. Pursuant to these statutes, riot victims could sue the locality in which the riot took place for property damage meted out by mobs. Riot statutes thus held local governments (and local residents via taxation) strictly liable for riot damages. (I?ve written more about these statutes here.)

Eugene might therefore take a page from the riot statutes of yesteryear by imposing collective financial responsibility for riots on residents of the west university neighborhoods where the riots have been forming. If the consequences were clear, residents hosting parties would have a reason to keep things from getting out of hand and neighbors might be quicker to alert authorities to impending disturbances. Although students don?t tend to be property owners, landlords in the affected areas would likely pass the costs on to their tenants and would also have greater incentive to rent with care and to keep an eye on their property. (You might think basic property maintenance would lead to the same result, but then you probably have not looked at student rental housing recently.)

Setting aside practicality, though, there is the small matter of punishing the innocent alongside the riot happy. A collective-responsibility regime seems to conflict with the law?s usual focus on individual actors, because liability does not turn on the state?s establishing any person?s involvement in a riot. In fact, actual innocence is no defense. On the other hand, effective response to widespread harms may call for a broader framework, creating appropriate incentives for residents when individual responsibility is too costly to determine (if it can be assessed at all). An enduring question for disaster law and policy, then, is how we can effectively mitigate disaster harms, preserving the safety and welfare of communities, without sacrificing individual rights along the way.