Sending a $12.5 Million Message to a Hate Group
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When jurors in Oregon assessed more than $12 million in damages against a white supremacist group and its leaders this week, they virtually indentured the leaders for the rest of their lives. Not that the civil rights lawyers who brought the case against the group, the White Aryan Resistance, ever expected to win nearly that much. “The amount of the award has no real relation to WAR’s assets,” said Morris Dees, the leading trial lawyer for the plaintiffs, referring to the white supremacist group by its acronym. The lawsuit Mr. Dees brought was a wrongful death action on behalf of the family of Mulugeta Seraw, a 27-year-old Ethiopian who was bludgeoned to death in Portland, Ore., two years ago by three “skinheads” who said they were followers of the White Aryan Resistance. “A judgment of several hundred thousand dollars would have done the job in terms of getting what these defendants have to give,” Mr. Dees said in an interview Wednesday. “The reason we asked for so much, and the reason the jury gave it to us, is the signal it would send to the organized hate business. We’re going to clean their clock.” Much Legal Work Remains But the process of tracing and seizing the assets and a portion of future earnings could involve as much legal work as it took to win the trial — maybe more, given the tendency of many white supremacist groups to change their names and bank accounts, said Charles Jones, a professor at Rutgers University Law School who is an expert on such lawsuits. The skinheads pleaded guilty in 1989 to criminal charges in the racially motivated killing. On Monday the Multnomah County circuit jury found that Thomas Metzger of Fall Brook, Calif., the 52-year-old head of the Aryan group, and his son John, 22, had intentionally incited Portland skinheads to provoke confrontations with minority groups, and should therefore be financially liable for Mr. Seraw’s death. The jury ordered the elder Mr. Metzger to pay $5 million in punitive damages, his son to pay $1 million and two of the skinheads $500,000 each. The jury also awarded $3 million in punitive damages against the white supremacist group and $2.5 million in compensatory damages under a rule that authorizes a plaintiff to collect the money from any defendant who can pay it. More : query.nytimes.com |