CHESAPEAKE — If a civil rights lawsuit against various county law enforcement agencies is not settled out of court, it will take 18 months before a jury gets to weigh in.

That’s when the suit of Anthony Patrick will come to trial before Judge Michael Bennett in U.S. District Court, Western Division, in Cincinnati.

In August 2009, a suit was filed by Patrick, a Huntington, W.Va.-based construction firm owner, charging his civil rights were violated when he was Tasered and arrested in the village of Chesapeake one year earlier.

Patrick and a juvenile were biking through Chesapeake as part of an endurance ride through Lawrence County before returning to Huntington. As they came through Chesapeake, they contend they were stopped and Tasered by Lawrence County Sheriff’s deputy Charles Hammonds and Dennis Gibson, then a village patrolmen and now Chesapeake Police Chief.

Patrick, then 37, was arrested and taken to Lawrence County Jail where he was charged with obstructing official business, resisting arrest, attempted assault on a police officer and operating a bike on the road.

A year after the incident Patrick filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court naming current Lawrence County Sheriff Jeff Lawless, Hammonds, then Chesapeake Police Chief Russell Bennett and the village as defendants.

The trial is set for July 18, 2011.