PHILADELPHIA — A man twice arrested for harassment while videotaping state police troopers as they conducted truck-safety inspections was awarded $41,000 in damages by a federal judge.

Truck driver Allen E. Robinson filed the civil rights lawsuit after he was arrested nearly three years ago at a checkpoint on Route 41 in Chester County that he believed was a danger to passing motorists.

Troopers Patrick V. Fetterman, John Rigney and Gregg Riek seized his camera and charged Robinson with harassment in October 2002. A local magistrate convicted him, but he appealed, and a county judge later dismissed the charges.

A federal judge in Philadelphia ruled on July 19 that there was no justification for the troopers’ conduct and ordered them to pay damages.

“Videotaping is a legitimate means of gathering information for public dissemination and can often provide cogent evidence, as it did in this case,” wrote U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III in his ruling in Robinson v. Fetterman. “In sum, there can be no doubt that the free speech clause of the Constitution protected Robinson as he videotaped the defendants.”

The state police will pay the damages if the decision is upheld, a department spokesman told the Philadelphia Daily News.

Robinson also had been convicted of harassment in 2000 for videotaping truck inspections. He never appealed that conviction.