1 cent for the 99 percent

OWSer’s tiny win vs. city

An Occupy Wall Street protester who was busted while fighting against the One Percent in 2011 sued the city — and was awarded a whopping one cent.

A Manhattan federal jury granted plaintiff Eric Gersbacher the penny after he claimed NYPD cops roughed him up during his caught-onvideo arrest in Zuccotti Park.

Three days after the social movement formed, Gersbacher was at a protest in the park, sitting on a tarp as police tried to get the crowd to disperse.

A group of officers can be seen tossing Gersbacher to the ground and rushing him before the video cuts out.

On Monday, a jury awarded the Buffalo man the token penny in his excessive-force case against the city and cops.

The panel found that NYPD Deputy Inspector Edward Winski used excessive force against Gersbacher, 27 — but not that the protester deserved any meaningful money for it.

Gersbacher claimed in his 2014 suit that he suffered “severe bruises, scars, and cuts on [his] forehead” as well as “prolonged pain in his back, neck, shoulders, arms, and wrists.”

Gersbacher, now a grad student at the University of San Diego, said he was forced to drop out of Buffalo State College at the time because of his injuries.

His suit also alleged that when his employers found out about charges brought against him during the protest, they fired him. The charges were eventually dismissed. But Judge Gregory Woods dismissed six of Gersbacher’s seven claims before they were even heard by the jury last week.

Woods pointed out that although Gersbacher said he had “a long-lasting abrasion” on his forehead, he “was unable to identify any injury to his head” when he looked at a still frame of himself taken from the video of the incident.

Woods also wrote that Gersbacher later bragged about the incident on Facebook, saying he “got arrested like a cool kid.”

Pat Miller, chief of the city Law Department’s special federal litigation division, said the verdict “shows the jury agreed this case had very little merit.’’

But Gersbacher’s lawyer, Wylie Stecklow, said, “The jury confusion or jury compromise that resulted in the nominal damage award does not change the result that this NYPD Inspector used excessive force.”