Any individual who knowingly, willfully or through gross negligence violates the provisions of this chapter by detaining a person for more than the allowable number of days shall be liable to the person detained in civil damages. It shall not be a prerequisite to an action under this section that the plaintiff shall have suffered or be threatened with special, as contrasted with general damages.
RCW 71.05.510
Damages for excessive detention.
Applied in 6 court decisions — leading case In Re The Detention Of N.G. And C.M. (2022)
Most recently applied in In re Det. of A.C. (July 2023)
2018 c 201 s 3022; 1974 ex.s. c 145 s 30; 1973 1st ex.s. c 142 s 56.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Washington State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Washington statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.