Those Westborough bastards finally get what they deserve

[effowe]

Source

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.

Snyder was the first in the nation to attempt to hold members of Westboro Baptist Church legally liable for their shock protests at military funerals after the church protested the military's inclusion of gays at the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, a 2003 Westminster High School graduate who died March 3, 2006, in a vehicle accident in Anbar province.

In June 2006, Snyder sued the tight-knit fundamentalist Christian church and three of its members individually. The father argued that Westboro's demonstrations exacerbated his pain and suffering in March 2006 while he mourned the death of his only son.

Specifically, he charged that they violated his privacy, intentionally inflicted emotional harm and engaged in a conspiracy to carry out their activities. The jury decided in Snyder's favor on every count.

The church and its members maintained that they did nothing wrong. They based their legal defense on the First Amendment, arguing that their protests were constitutionally protected. Their attorneys told jurors yesterday that Westboro members were expressing closely held religious beliefs about an immoral society, including the military, that has endorsed homosexuality.

Jonathan Katz, the attorney for the church and one of its founders, said that members followed state law during their protest in Westminster because they stood on public property about 1,000 feet from the funeral.

The church's controversial protests have prompted at least 22 states to enact or propose laws to limit the rights of protesters at funerals. Only months after Matthew Snyder's death, Maryland passed a law prohibiting people from picketing within 100 feet of a funeral, memorial, burial or procession.

UPDATE:
Source

FTA..

The jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned later in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress.

There is more information in the link.

 

[FoBoT]

he won't collect much, if any money

it isn't a real church, so he'll have a hard time getting money from a stone

 

[Anubis]

+1 for the good guys

 

[yllus]

I'm not a lawyer so I'll go with what the courts decided, but I sort of don't like this verdict. You should be able to protest damn near anything as long as you're on public property and all that.

 

[Noobtastic]

Freedom of speech no longer applies in the event of hurting someone else's feelings, no matter how unjustified?

Might as well tear apart the constitution.

 

[SsupernovaE]

This needs to be overturned. I won't lose sleep if they have to pay, or somehow die in a fire.

 

[flxnimprtmscl]

Tough call. I'm inclined to agree with the verdict, but it's definitely a dangerous precedent.

 

[Homerboy]

Originally posted by: Noobtastic
Freedom of speech no longer applies in the event of hurting someone else's feelings, no matter how unjustified?

While I despise what they did, I don't find any fault in it as long as long as it was on public property and didn't infringe on the proceedings.

Sadly, nowadays, hurting a persons feelings is the worst crime you can commit.

 

[nakedfrog]

The mom of that family has a trial coming up near me... the prosecution's main case is that she was negligent by placing her child in a potentially dangerous situation when she had him stomp on a flag at a serviceman's funeral.

 

[waggy]

Originally posted by: yllus
I'm not a lawyer so I'll go with what the courts decided, but I sort of don't like this verdict. You should be able to protest damn near anything as long as you're on public property and all that.

i have to agree.

while distastfull they have the right to protest. I think this verdict was wrong.

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: flxnimprtmscl
Tough call. I'm inclined to agree with the verdict, but it's definitely a dangerous precedent.

I agree. It's good to see those bastards get some payback (of course, they'll just use this case to "prove" how morally degraded society has become, and probably call the judge a gay apologist:roll, but yeah, I don't really want to see where this case ends up being cited in ten years.

 

[nakedfrog]

Do you think if everyone in ATOT collectively wished for it, their "church" would be struck by lightning?

Or perhaps we can hijack some of the Highly Technical folks into building us a lightning machine?

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
Do you think if everyone in ATOT collectively wished for it, their "church" would be struck by lightning?

Or perhaps we can hijack some of the Highly Technical folks into building us a lightning machine?

If you could make things spontaneously combust just by being really, really angry at them, the world would be a very different place.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

As much as I want to see the people at the church kicked in the balls and dropped off in a desert (after all, they sure as hell aren't for any freedoms for other people), I don't agree with this ruling.

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

Stick 'em in a bus and push it off a cliff FTW.

 

[mugs]

Yeah... I wish they'd all die, but I don't like that verdict.

 

[foghorn67]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
Do you think if everyone in ATOT collectively wished for it, their "church" would be struck by lightning?

Or perhaps we can hijack some of the Highly Technical folks into building us a lightning machine?

unexplained death by bullets would be my choice for them.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Originally posted by: foghorn67

Originally posted by: nakedfrog
Do you think if everyone in ATOT collectively wished for it, their "church" would be struck by lightning?

Or perhaps we can hijack some of the Highly Technical folks into building us a lightning machine?

unexplained death by bullets would be my choice for them.

High velocity lead poisoning, blame it on the imported toys.

 

[maziwanka]

this'll be appealed

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: waggy

Originally posted by: yllus
I'm not a lawyer so I'll go with what the courts decided, but I sort of don't like this verdict. You should be able to protest damn near anything as long as you're on public property and all that.

i have to agree.

while distastfull they have the right to protest. I think this verdict was wrong.

The should have the right to protest, just not anywhere at anytime. If you disagree with this verdict, then you should think noise bylaws are unconstitutional for infringing on a protester's rights to demonstrate at 3 am.

There are all sorts of limits to protesting. This is nothing new. You can't protest using hate literature for example. All this ruling does is set some new and welcome limits.

 

[RagingBITCH]

I think there protests are uncalled for but like others said, they don't have much money to pay out.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Hard to see how this is constitutional. Those Westboro people are scum and deserve to be hammered, but it seems to me this was clearly protected free speech. Ya never know, though - this was a federal case, and in my experience federal judges are pretty much always very bright people (whereas some state court judges are less so).

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: silverpig

Originally posted by: waggy

Originally posted by: yllus
I'm not a lawyer so I'll go with what the courts decided, but I sort of don't like this verdict. You should be able to protest damn near anything as long as you're on public property and all that.

i have to agree.

while distastfull they have the right to protest. I think this verdict was wrong.

The should have the right to protest, just not anywhere at anytime. If you disagree with this verdict, then you should think noise bylaws are unconstitutional for infringing on a protester's rights to demonstrate at 3 am.

There are all sorts of limits to protesting. This is nothing new. You can't protest using hate literature for example. All this ruling does is set some new and welcome limits.

If they protested at a time or in a place where they weren't allowed to, or they didn't have the appropriate permits or whatever, then they deserve an appropriate fine. But that's not what's going on here. This is a jury punishing a group for saying things that weren't very nice. I have a problem with that.

 

[foghorn67]

Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
High velocity lead poisoning, blame it on the imported toys.

I was trying to word my post really clever...like this.

 

[StageLeft]

Surprised they were found guilty of anything, since that is a weak case legally. Morally it's not, and there was nothing godly about what they did, either.

This is a jury punishing a group for saying things that weren't very nice.

This is correct, they didn't do anything actually illegal, did they?