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
Something that's never occured to me: why don't the owners of the cemetaries simply bar access to these nuts?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
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.
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posted
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.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
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 Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
having a degree doesnt make you not an idiot it says that you shouldve known better then to be an idiot.
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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?
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posted
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.
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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.
Read it again, this was a jury trial.
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posted
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.
I hope someone uses their first amendment rights to post a video on YouTube of Fred Phelps dancing on the street for nickels.
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Truthfully, I think it is an extremely bad thing for our democracy if those who wish to protest on public property are under the threat of multi-million dollar lawsuits for doing so.
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posted
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. And my conscience tells me that these actions should not be protected.
posted
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.
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.
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posted
Lawsuits set precedent. I wonder who will be silenced next? There's no guarantee it will be someone we dislike.
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posted
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.
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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.
Presumably, they did.
From the Snyder website:
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.
From the Baltimore Sun article:
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.
The question is whether or not WBC intentionally maligned Matt Snyder. Apparently, they wrote an essay titled 'The Burden of Matthew Snyder' regarding Snyder's married life; I haven't read it. (And probably won't.) Was that document libelous?
The protest signs carried at the funeral were not enough, IMO, to prove that the family was a specific target; my understanding is that the same signs are used in other protests.
There were seven protestors at Matt Snyder's funeral; three adults and four children. Matt Snyder's dad testified he didn't even see the protestors until the news casts that night.
It's that portion that bothers me-- the harm caused was not a direct harm; it was something reported on by a third party. If I post a diatribe against fat, left-handed, brown-eyed civil defense attorneys on the internet, and one of them reads it, and shoots himself-- am I then liable for his suicide?
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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.
I agree, but that is why these people should get moral punishment rather than legal punishment.
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posted
The primary moral punishment is the simple fact that you did something wrong. This is a punishment that comes automatically with any crime, and that nobody has to assign to you in order for it to take effect.
But beyond that, punishments for moral (but not legal) crimes can include things like shame, being ostracized by society, not being trusted, and suffering the inevitable consequences of your actions. For these protesters, one particularly major punishment is that (even though they must not realize it) they make their position on homosexuality look completely ridiculous, and thus achieve exactly the opposite of what they intend to achieve with these protests. In addition, there is whatever punishment God could assign to the crime. Given that this is a church that seems to believe in a very wrathful God, that may be the punishment they should fear the most. Next to that, I suspect the $2.9 million would be nothing to them.
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Matt Snyder's dad testified he didn't even see the protesters until the news casts that night.
I hadn't seen that. It's still defamation though, AFAIK. The media recorded it, and others at the funeral probably saw them too.
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.
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posted
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.
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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.
Part of me wishes there was an afterlife for them to be punished in. But another part of me just feels sorry for them.
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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.
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posted
We need to make sure that we are consistent in our application of free speech; not just allow speech we agree with and silence speech we don't agree with.
Posts: 87 | Registered: Apr 2007
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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.
Basically, it kind of boils down to TomDavidson's beleaguered point that I can't control how you interpret or react to the things that I say.
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?
That seems to be the judgment in this case.
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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.
The award was increased to $10.9 million after punitive damages were added by the jury.
"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." The Constitution is not some Platonic ideal floating in space, every law has to be interpreted. Courts and laws are how we do that.
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posted
Among other things, the printed work of WBC includes accusations of adultery. That alone is strictly libelous if not proven true.
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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.
Where in the First Amendment does it say it applies to the states? This was an action under state law, not federal (even though it was in federal court). If you want a literal text interpretation of the Constitution, you need to point to the place where it says states can't restrict free speech.
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.
The problem here is that you've mixed content-based analysis ("message of hate" and "nasty signs") with time/place/manner analysis ("loudly" and "near a deeply important, private event mourning a dead loved one.") Any restriction that's content-based is not eligible for the more permissive time/place/manner analysis.
Several of the claims made by the plaintiff (defamation, invasion of privacy-publicity given to private life, intentional infliction of emotional distress) are based mostly on the content of the speech. Each of these causes of actions have been upheld against first amendment challenges in particular instances. The appeals court would have to look at the particular facts entered into evidence - showing great deference to the jury - to see if applying those causes of action in this case violates the first amendment.
Invasion of privacy-intrusion upon seclusion is not based on content but is more akin to time/manner/place restrictions. Unfortunately, I can't tell for which party the jury found on each of the claims, so I don't know if there was any non-content based element to the actual verdict.
A defamation claim cannot survive a first amendment challenge if the charge is true. Moreover, if the target of defamation is a public figure, the claim cannot survive unless it is proven that the defendant acted either knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. If the matter is one of public concern but the target is not a public figure, the standard is slightly less stringent.
quote:Among other things, the printed work of WBC includes accusations of adultery. That alone is strictly libelous if not proven true.
I was about to add this. The thing to keep in mind is that the public figure rules trump this rule. That is, a non-malicious untrue statement about marital fidelity made without reckless disregard for the truth about a public figure is not actionable under the first amendment. Also, I'm not sure if the rule about untrue statements of marital infidelity exists in all states.
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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.
Oooo...really good point! There are certainly legal restrictions about where and when obscene pictures and so forth can be displayed. Even on your own private property you mightn't be allowed to, for example, put up a billboard with lewd pictures.
These people are at least as obscene.
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For colloquial usage of the word "obscene," I would agree. But not as the word is used in first amendment law.
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posted
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 )
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"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.
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For colloquial usage of the word "obscene," I would agree. But not as the word is used in first amendment law.
True. This may be a good time to ponder why some things are considered legally obscene and some things aren't. 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.
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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?
What if you wanted to make him depressed and you were reasonably certain that you could cause him to be depressed?
I guess that's what I wonder. Intent does play a factor in many crimes. Should the intent of speech affect ones culpability for the effects of that speech?
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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.
That's not really fair, though, because the mere exposure of a breast will not qualify as obscene under first amendment law.
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.
Note that there is much speech that is not obscene that can be banned under the First Amendment. Even more speech can be regulated (say by creating civil liability for it). This includes certain types of threats (not all violent - think blackmail), certain types of secrets (for certain people), certain types of lies (ranging from fraud to defamation), and certain types of private but true information.
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posted
I thought perhaps breast was too mild, but that was the first thing that came to mind. How about penis?
I think it is an odd facet of our culture that "prurient" is considered so much worse than "hateful". It is commonly accepted, even ingrained, that we need to be protected from being aroused to sexual thoughts but not to being incited to anger or hatred.
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