$16.5M settlement reached in class-action lawsuit over mass arrests during 2010 G20 summit

A $16.5-million settlement has been reached in a class-action lawsuit over mass arrests at the 2010 G20 summit.

The agreement comes after 10 years of court proceedings and negotiations between the Toronto Police Services Board and representatives for about 1,100 people who were arrested during the summit.

Under the settlement, those arrested will each be entitled to compensation between $5,000 and $24,700, depending on their experiences.

The deal also includes a public acknowledgement by police regarding the mass arrests and the conditions in which protestors where detained, as well as commitment to changing how protests are policed in the future.

Those who were wrongfully arrested will also have their police records expunged.

Thousands participated in demonstrations

Toronto hosted the G20 summit of world leaders in June 2010.

Many public demonstrations were organized to address issues like climate change, globalizationand poverty. Thousands of protestors demonstrated peacefully, but some protests were accompanied by deliberate vandalism.

Police reacted by encircling large groups of hundreds of protestors in several locations in downtown Toronto with cordons of riot police, holding them for hours, and then transferring many of them to a temporary detention centre.

The lawsuit was launched in 2010 by Sherry Good as the legal representative of approximately 1,100 class members. The Toronto Police Service initially objected to the class-action proceedings in court, and theclass-action status wasnot finalized until November 2016.

"When these events happened many Canadians could not believe they happened inCanada. The settlement appears to fairly recognize through financial compensation, acknowledgements and reforms that they shouldn't have happened and will never happen again," said Eric Gillespie, a Toronto litigation lawyer leading the case with Murray Klippenstein.

Klippenstein and Gillespie are urging anyone who was present atthe June 2010 G20 riots and who might be eligible for compensation to contact them or review theG20 class-action website.

WATCH | The Fifth Estate's documentary, 'You Should Have Stayed At Home,' aboutToronto G20 protests: