Althouse: "Jurors on Tuesday found the main organizers of the deadly right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 liable under state law for injuries to counterprotesters..."

November 23, 2021

"Jurors on Tuesday found the main organizers of the deadly right-wing rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 liable under state law for injuries to counterprotesters..."

"... awarding more than $25 million in damages. But the jury deadlocked on federal conspiracy charges. The case in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville was brought by nine plaintiffs, four men and five women, including four people injured in the same car attack that killed one counterprotester, 32-year-old Heather Heyer.... They said... they hoped to deter hate groups from mounting similar toxic spectacles in the future."

The NYT reports.

36 comments:

Kevin said...: Holding breath to see if this will be applied to antifa/blm

Ooops, I'm dead; 11/23/21, 2:25 PM
Gospace said...: That ought be oiverturned on appeal- and should have been thrown out by the court.; 11/23/21, 2:27 PM
MikeR said...: So here they'll probably give a massive fine to the parade organizers.; 11/23/21, 2:28 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: "Similar toxic spectacles"? Waukesha, perhaps?; 11/23/21, 2:33 PM
M Jordan said...: Jury sending a message. I like it!

Not.; 11/23/21, 2:33 PM
Wince said...: Are they holding other people responsible for the driver of the car that struck people?

If not "conspiracy," what legal theory does the statute follow?

Vicarious liability? Respondeat superior? Agency? Premises liability?

Short of meeting the Brandenburg standard, is the Virginia law constitutional?; 11/23/21, 2:38 PM
Achilles said...: Well, the "parade" organizers were all Occupy Wall Street members.; 11/23/21, 2:47 PM
n.n said...: It was a deadly left-wing rally, where Antifa following their national model, mobbed a lone traveler (and often police officers, too), denied his exit, and forced the death of one of their own. Another case of the government taking a knee, thereby leaving people... persons no alternative to exercise self-defense to not a plausible (a la Capitol Hill "hero"), not an imminent, not even probable, but immediate risk.; 11/23/21, 2:47 PM
Iman said...: The usual, hyperbolic bullshit from the Blue East Coast.

#terrymccauliffeskates; 11/23/21, 2:48 PM
Temujin said...: I'm thinking the same standard will not be applied in Minneapolis, St. Louis, Portland, Seattle, and other cities where BLM/Antifa riots killed people and destroyed billions in property.; 11/23/21, 2:51 PM
n.n said...: Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment), including racism, sexism, ageism, and other class-based bigotry, breeds adversity.; 11/23/21, 2:54 PM
What's emanating from your penumbra said...: Hmm. Organize a rally, some of the attendees go wild and injure people, and the organizers are held liable. Need more like this.; 11/23/21, 3:09 PM
Robert Marshall said...: Getting a judgment and upholding it on appeal is one thing (which the plaintiffs are half-way done with). Collecting the money, though, is quite another thing.

Who's got the deep pockets in this case? The Q-Anon Shaman?

Let's levy on his headgear! That's gotta be worth something.; 11/23/21, 3:22 PM
Yancey Ward said...: I don't see how this stands up on appeal. There was literally no evidence presented that the defendants did anything that caused the accident other than supporting the holding of a permitted legal parade. The entities most liable here other than the driver are Charlottesville municipal government and, in my opinion Terry McAuliffe.; 11/23/21, 3:37 PM
tds said...: "... [plaintiffs] hoped to deter hate groups from mounting similar toxic spectacles in the future."

oh, so it's not about organizers having done sth wrong, it's about sending a message.; 11/23/21, 3:39 PM
Vance said...: If I recall, weren't the organizers of the Charlottesville thing actually Obama administration officials?; 11/23/21, 3:40 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: How can that work with the First Amendment?; 11/23/21, 3:49 PM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: don't tase me bro!; 11/23/21, 4:27 PM
Readering said...: One needs a chart to show which plaintiffs scored how much against which defendants. The USSC has set constitutional limits on the ratio of compensatory to punitive damages, so I expect from what I have read that the punitive damages awards will be reduced severely.; 11/23/21, 4:38 PM
Rosalyn C. said...: Are we going to start giving tests to potential jurors on the Constitution?

I don't see how the jury's statement of their intent to prevent freedom of speech and assembly doesn't disqualify their finding. Shouldn't the judge have tossed it out?; 11/23/21, 4:42 PM
John henry said...: I am drinking a refreshing, cool, glass of bleach (sodium hypochlorite) as I read this and smile. I smile because the people who lost this suit are my enemies. As several gave pointed out.

Very dilute bleach. A/k/a tap water.

John LGBTQBNY Henry; 11/23/21, 4:46 PM
Big Mike said...: I finally managed to wriggle past the paywall. I don’t understand why former governor Terry McAuliffe and former Charlottesville mayor Michael Signer are not codefendants. There is ample evidence that had they allowed (or directed) the Charlottesville police to do their jobs and keep the groups separated then there would have been no violence. Had the cops cleared a deliberately-created traffic jam at the end of a one-way street, Heather Heyer would still be alive.

As far as I am concerned McAuliffe and Signer are at least as culpable as Richard Spencer.; 11/23/21, 4:48 PM
Big Mike said...: I should add that McAuliffe, Signer, and whoever organized the self-described counter-protesters may have been the first signal that the Democrats were going to use violence as a political tool during the Trump years (and apparently beyond).; 11/23/21, 4:53 PM
tim in vermont said...: Now do Minneapolis.; 11/23/21, 4:55 PM
n.n said...: There is another problem with this handmade tale, while the left-right nexus is leftist, the right-wing ("libertarian") is not diversitist (i.e. class-based judgments), let alone rabid, in principle. Speaking truth through projection earns them progressive disenchantment.; 11/23/21, 5:18 PM
Andrew said...: The media is almost salivating that they can change the subject from what just happened in Wisconsin. I'm watching the news right now (ABC). Two racial stories: Charlottesville, and the Arbery trial. The parade massacre? No mention of race at all. No motive given. At least the news acknowledged there has now been a 6th victim, a child.; 11/23/21, 5:47 PM
mccullough said...: This will put an end to public protests and parades.

Local governments will require $25 million in insurance coverage for organizers of rallies and parades.

Looks like business owners in Kenosha can now sue BLM for organizing their protests last summer. Property damage and business interruption losses will clear $25 million.; 11/23/21, 6:22 PM
rcocean said...: I thought you were supposed to file civil lawsuits because you actually suffered damages and needed recompense. I didn't realize our courts are now in the business of giving people $millions because the people they disliked were Nazis.

From what I've read, the whole trial was a farce, with the judge intervening when the jury was split and more or less telling the minority to get the program or he'd lock them up over Thanksgiving.

Supposedly this was initally dismissed as a SLAAP suit (I'm a fuzzy on what that is), but then the decision was changed. I've only been half-paying attention.

Charlottsville was a fake manufactured event designed to hurt Trump and that was its main purpose. Just like the "Deadly" Jan 6th insurrection.

Crushing pathetic Nazis in 2021, is just a sidebar.; 11/23/21, 7:48 PM
M said...: Does this make BLM and ANTIFA liable for all injuries and damages caused by their “rally’s”? We know the answer to that is NO. So why not? Some ambulance chasing lawyers need to use this as precedent to sue the hell out of BLM, ANTIFA and their big time donors and supporters.; 11/23/21, 8:54 PM
Bunkypotatohead said...: Well the solution is for the "right wing" to hold its rallies the way antifa and blm do. Arrange transport behind the scenes, burn the place down, then disperse before the law figures out who was involved.; 11/23/21, 9:14 PM
holdfast said...: The timing on this is rather exquisite.; 11/23/21, 9:42 PM
Leora said...: So will Andy Ngo's lawsuits get more traction now?; 11/23/21, 10:07 PM
Douglas B. Levene said...: This suit was brought primarily for symbolic reasons since the defendants can’t pay more than a fraction of the damages awarded. Even so, I’m glad the plaintiffs brought it and gave the defendants a chance to flaunt their Jew-hatred in public. There’s nothing like a little sunlight to air out the stink and corruption of the alt-right.; 11/24/21, 7:49 AM
Joe Biden, America's Putin said...: @ Big Mike

.... the first signal that the Democrats were going to use violence as a political tool during the Trump years (and apparently beyond).

yes.; 11/24/21, 8:34 AM
Big Mike said...: @rcocean, you couldn’t look it up because you remembered the acronym wrong. From Wikipedia:

“A strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP), SLAPP suit, or intimidation lawsuit is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.”; 11/24/21, 9:53 AM
GRW3 said...: Unlike last summer's BLM and Antifa wildings, the right wing groups in Charlottesville didn't just start this on their own. The Antifa brigades came ready for a fight. Reading the non-partisan reports on the events shows that rather that keep the opposing partisans apart, as any rational law enforcement operation would do, the Charlottesville authorities actively pushed them together (with the implied reason being to spark a confrontation to help illustrate Orange Man Bad).; 11/24/21, 9:54 AM