US Senator Rand Paul seeks up to $1 million from a neighbor who assaulted him back in 2016, according to a report by Lexington Herald-Leader.
A civil complaint filed on behalf of the senator accuses Rene Boucher, a retired anesthesiologist, of intentional assault on the politician, citing his political agenda.
Boucher, who already admitted assaulting the senator in 2017, said in court that the attack happened because Paul repeatedly stacked waste near the line dividing their property. He said he had to remove the waste several times and even injured himself one day prior to the attack. The next day, he said he saw the senator, lost his temper, ran up to Paul and tackled him from behind, which resulted in the senator suffering several broken ribs.
Unsatisfied with the sentence, Paul now seeks up to $500,000 in damages and up to $1 million more to punish Boucher, the Herald-Leader reports.
The senator insists that the attack had nothing to do with waste, but was rather politically motivated.
He said Boucher's "deep-seated anger towards me commingles with his hatred of my political policies."
The assault was "utterly disproportionate to the triviality of a 'lawn offense'," which "strongly suggests that something more exists here," Paul wrote in the complaint.
The retired doctor said he tried to talk to the senator about the waste issue, but the senator always walked away from him.
The federal judge who presided over the 2017 case also said she found no political motivation in the assault, describing it as "strictly a dispute between neighbours."
Now, the court's decision will show how much breaking a senator's ribs costs, exactly.
