quote:

---

Albert Snyder of York, Pa., the father of a Westminster Marine who was killed in Iraq, today won his case in a Baltimore federal court against members of Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church who protested at his son's funeral last year.

The jury of five women and four men awarded Snyder $2.9 million in compensatory damages. The amount of punitive damages to be awarded has not yet been decided. The jury deliberated for about two hours yesterday and much of today.

---

 

---

Posted by brojack17 (Member # 9189) on :
 
I thought God hated f@gs; and therefore, sent these people to protest at soldiers funerals.

I'm glad to see these people are being held accountable for their actions. They make me sick.
 

---

Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
Something that's never occured to me: why don't the owners of the cemetaries simply bar access to these nuts?
 

---

Posted by Threads (Member # 10863) on :
 
Multi-million dollar compensations bother me even in cases like this.
 

---

Posted by Enigmatic (Member # 7785) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rakeesh:
Something that's never occured to me: why don't the owners of the cemetaries simply bar access to these nuts?

---

"...they stood on public property about 1,000 feet from the funeral."

--Enigmatic
 

---

Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
 
I can't see how it matters; the Westboro nuts cannot possibly pay any such sum, surely.
 

---

Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
 
I like to think of it like the lottery, you know, idiot tax.
 

---

Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
 
But they have to have *some* assets, right?
 

---

Posted by Goody Scrivener (Member # 6742) on :
 
Once the judgment is entered, though, Snyder can file for liens against all property held by the defendant(s). The church AND all individuals found guilty.

If any guilty defendant ever sells real property or wins a judgment in a lawsuit, the proceeds immediately go to Snyder to pay that defendant's portion of the settlement. If there's any proceeds left over, that particular lien is released and any remaining funds then go to the defendant. If there's still an outstanding balance for that defendant, the lien is adjusted to show what's still due and owing. Tax refunds might also be payable toward judgment liens but I don't know for sure.
 

---

Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
 
Blayne: They're not idiots. Many of them are smart enough to have obtained legal degrees.

But they ARE evil and wear their hate on their sleeves.

Imagine you have a child. Close your eyes and REALLY imagine it. Think of your hopes and dreams for that child...

Now imagine he died.

Then imagine these jackasses stand around and shout and cheer while you're trying to bury that child.

My hope is that this judgement.. And the ones that use this one as a precedent... will put the kibosh on the Phelps's jackassery from here on.
 

---

Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
I wonder whether this sets a precedent for further action by other people that they have protested against in the past. This is not the only time they've done this kind of thing.

As for whether multi-million settlements are broken: Hey, at least even a broken chronometer is correct two times a day
 

---

Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
 
having a degree doesnt make you not an idiot it says that you shouldve known better then to be an idiot.
 

---

Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
 
This is one of the few SLAPPs I can get behind. I hope Westboro collapses in a flurry of bankruptcies and backstabbing like when the SPLC sued the Klan out of business (before it was reborn.)

I wonder if it will hold up to appeal though?
 

---

Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
As much as I hate Westboro Baptist protests, I am not sure they should have lost this case. The linked article did not specifically state why the judge ruled against them. On the surface, 1st amendment rights seem to hold sway here.
 

---

Posted by HollowEarth (Member # 2586) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by BlackBlade:
As much as I hate Westboro Baptist protests, I am not sure they should have lost this case. The linked article did not specifically state why the judge ruled against them. On the surface, 1st amendment rights seem to hold sway here.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Speed:
You know, I hate frivolous multi-million dollar lawsuits as much as the next guy. And I love the first amendment more than I can explain. But try as I might, I just can't suppress the warm fuzzy feeling I get when I read about this.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by steven:
To some degree, I think that hate speech (not entirely, but to some degree) qualifies as "shouting fire in a crowded theater." Not entirely, but it can.

Flame me at will.

---

What it qualifies as is "Standing in the middle of the street in the middle of the night SCREAMING while people are trying to sleep."

If you do that, the police will haul you away and rightly so.

Protesting someone's FUNERAL is at least as bad as keeping them up all night by disturbing the peace. You have free speech, you don't have the right to harass people. If you want to speak, do it away from the people who are putting their baby in the ground.
 

---

Posted by Qaz (Member # 10298) on :
 
Lawsuits set precedent. I wonder who will be silenced next? There's no guarantee it will be someone we dislike.
 

---

Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
 
They haven't been silenced. The 1st amendment allows for time/place/manner restrictions. You don't have the right to say whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want. I think it's perfectly okay to say that people don't have a right to spread a message of hate (loudly & with nasty signs, from all accounts) near a deeply important, private event mourning a dead loved one.
 

---

Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
 
Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder's family has a website, with court documents posted:
http://matthewsnyder.org/index.html

Free speech and freedom of religion are two of the rights that made our country great. But they have limits. If a group protested at one specific funeral of someone they hated, for whatever reason, that would be one thing. Distasteful, rude, etc, but I think you might make an argument for it. I might even support your right to do so, I'm not sure.

But to blanket protest EVERY military death, as Westboro's websites do (including specific details about many dead soldiers, and crude and disgusting insults to the dead soldiers, their families, their religions, etc, according to court documents), and to travel hundreds of miles to protest (with extraordinarily offensive signs and songs) funerals of people they know nothing about, is insane and there are flimsy constitutional grounds for doing so. You might be able to make a prior restraint argument nullifying laws prohibiting it, as presumably Westboro has argued in the past.

However, I think they are vulnerable to civil lawsuits on invasion of privacy and defamation grounds. After reading the below quoted SC decision, I think this judgment might withstand appeal!

The judge's decision denying Westboro's motion to dismiss is interesting. It cites a relevant SC case, NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION v. FAVISH et al 541 U.S. 157 ,168 (2003). The case affirms a family's right to privacy and to grieve in peace, although the case is about a FOIA request for Vince Foster's autopsy photos.

quote:

---

Burial rites or their counterparts have been respected in almost all civilizations from time immemorial. See generally 26 Encyclopaedia Britannica 851 (15th ed. 1985) (noting that "[t]he ritual burial of the dead" has been practiced "from the very dawn of human culture and ... in most parts of the world"); 5 Encyclopedia of Religion 450 (1987) ("[F]uneral rites ... are the conscious cultural forms of one of our most ancient, universal, and unconscious impulses"). They are a sign of the respect a society shows for the deceased and for the surviving family members. The power of Sophocles' story in Antigone maintains its hold to this day because of the universal acceptance of the heroine's right to insist on respect for the body of her brother. See Antigone of Sophocles, 8 Harvard Classics: Nine Greek Dramas 255 (C. Eliot ed. 1909). The outrage at seeing the bodies of American soldiers mutilated and dragged through the streets is but a modern instance of the same understanding of the interests decent people have for those whom they have lost. Family members have a personal stake in honoring and mourning their dead and objecting to unwarranted public exploitation that, by intruding upon their own grief, tends to degrade the rites and respect they seek to accord to the deceased person who was once their own.

In addition this well-established cultural tradition acknowledging a family's control over the body and death images of the deceased has long been recognized at common law. Indeed, this right to privacy has much deeper roots in the common law than the rap sheets held to be protected from disclosure in Reporters Committee. An early decision by the New York Court of Appeals is typical:

"It is the right of privacy of the living which it is sought to enforce here. That right may in some cases be itself violated by improperly interfering with the character or memory of a deceased relative, but it is the right of the living, and not that of the dead, which is recognized. A privilege may be given the surviving relatives of a deceased person to protect his memory, but the privilege exists for the benefit of the living, to protect their feelings, and to prevent a violation of their own rights in the character and memory of the deceased." Schuyler v. Curtis, 147 N. Y. 434, 447, 42 N. E. 22, 25 (1895).

---

quote:

---

If you want to speak, do it away from the people who are putting their baby in the ground.

---

quote:

---

This case simply alleges that one does not have the right to conspire to use lies in order to inflict intentional harm upon persons who are grieving the death of their children.

---

quote:

---

The courtroom fight came down to whether Westboro had a legal right to demonstrate at Snyder's funeral or whether the protesters crossed the line because their message impugned the grieving family's reputation and unlawfully invaded the Snyders' privacy.

---

quote:

---

You have a point Tresopax, and I agree with it in the interests of our Constitution....but for me, my moral standard and just plain common sense go beyond the law.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Noemon:
What might moral punishment consist of?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Scott R:
Matt Snyder's dad testified he didn't even see the protesters until the news casts that night.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by baduffer:
I have every reason to hope that they suffer the fate that they wish upon us but no matter how repugnant their message I believe that this judgment is a dangerous one to free speech.

---

quote:

---

Read it again, this was a jury trial.

---

quote:

---

They haven't been silenced. The 1st amendment allows for time/place/manner restrictions.

---

quote:

---

I don't get your point about "a diatribe against fat, left-handed, brown-eyed civil defense attorneys"--you mention an essay specifically about Snyder that Westboro posted. I haven't read it either, but knowing Westboro's tactics there's a very good chance it's libelous.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Occasional:

quote:

---

Read it again, this was a jury trial.

---

This is yet another example of why I refuse to be judged by a jury "of my peers." Not only is the $2.9 million a horribly over-priced amount for free speech, but it sounds like those who heard the case have never read the Constitution of the U.S. in regards to that. If this was because of what they had done on private property I would be less concerned about the outcome.

quote:

---

They haven't been silenced. The 1st amendment allows for time/place/manner restrictions.

---

Bull! I would like to know where it says that in the 1st amendment? It might say that in some court documents or laws, but not in the 1st amendment that makes no such judgements. Even then, as far as this group specifically, I would like to know exactly WHAT those restrictions are they are allowed to follow? Probably something like, "you are not allowed to talk about dead soldiers dying from a sinful life, unless in the confines of your church." This even brings that under question depending on the whim of a few jerks picked randomly who might be no more qualified to give me my fate than I am telling a stranger to give me all their money.

---

quote:

---

Bull! I would like to know where it says that in the 1st amendment? It might say that in some court documents or laws, but not in the 1st amendment that makes no such judgements.

---

quote:

---

They haven't been silenced. The 1st amendment allows for time/place/manner restrictions. You don't have the right to say whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want. I think it's perfectly okay to say that people don't have a right to spread a message of hate (loudly & with nasty signs, from all accounts) near a deeply important, private event mourning a dead loved one.

---

quote:

---

Among other things, the printed work of WBC includes accusations of adultery. That alone is strictly libelous if not proven true.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jim-Me:
There is a rather broad and famously vague exception for "obscenity".

I can think of no greater obscenity, off hand, than the WBC.

---

quote:

---

These people are at least as obscene.

---

For colloquial usage of the word "obscene," I would agree. But not as the word is used in first amendment law.
 

---

Posted by Sergeant (Member # 8749) on :
 
Very little of the constitution is applied without a framework of analysis provided by the courts. It is not a civil code that spells out what to do in every situation but rather a set of ideals to be applied to varying sets of fact. The facts are that not all speech is protected nor should it be. Where the speech infringes upon others fundamental rights it enters the relm of sactionable speech.

As for this case provides precedent for further infringement of 1st Amendment rights, remember that this is a trial court. Trial court cases are often unpublished and do not provide significant influence in the way of precedent. If this is appealed (which it no doubt will be) and upheld it then will provide precedent for that jurisdiction. But Judges are very good at writing opinions that restrict the case to a very specific set of facts when they are ruling on a case that they like the outcome don't want it applied to cases that are not based on the same facts (Justice O'Conner was particularly good at this).

In my view the WBC was infringing on the family's fundamental rights with their activities and thus their speech was not protected. I'm not going to bother doing a bunch of research on the libel law involved but because Lance Cpl. Snyder and his family were not public figures they are afforded more protection than say a sitting senator and thus there would be no requirement to show that the WBC was acting with malice, only that they said things that were false and which they knew or should have known were false and that damage resulted.

Now, I'll go back to writing the paper I'm supposed to be writing

Sergeant

Edit: Dagonee stated the libel law more succinctly than I but I would by no means call Snyder or his family a public figure. Just because they have been thrust into the public eye by the current controversy isn't relavant, only their status before the alleged libel took place (having flashbacks to my 1L brief )
 

---

Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
 
A short interview of Phelps after the verdict--CNN

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"--unless your name is Phelps. There are limits.
 

---

Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dagonee:

quote:

---

These people are at least as obscene.

---

For colloquial usage of the word "obscene," I would agree. But not as the word is used in first amendment law.

---

quote:

---

I posted a critique of an author's story recently on my website. If that author becomes so depressed by the critique I gave him, should I be responsible for his therapy bills?

---

quote:

---

In my opinion, the kind of hatred and blasphemy that Phelps and his group spew is certainly more harmful, offensive, disturbing and so forth than seeing a breast.

---

quote:

---

This may be a good time to ponder why some things are considered legally obscene and some things aren't.

---

It's always a good time for that (says the law geek).

To be legally obscene, speech must have sexual or excretory content, but that alone will not suffice. Here's a decent summary of the Miller test for obscenity that can be banned under the first amendment:

quote:

---

# the average person, applying contemporary community standards (not national standards, as some prior tests required), must find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
# the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law; and
# the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dagonee:
This was an action under state law, not federal (even though it was in federal court).

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jim-Me:
I was just trying to throw out an obvious challenge to the idea that 1st amendment rights are currently absolute. Whether they should be, is, of course, a separate debate.

edit: not to say that the ensuing argument isn't both fun and useful... just that my intent was to say that, as Morbo put it, even the first amendment has limits.

---

quote:

---

Is that the same in Canada?

---

No idea.

quote:

---

What is the background (historical or otherwise) for having federal courts interpret state law (or vice versa)?

---

quote:

---

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States; between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

---