Jury awards $26M in damages for Unite the Right rally
A CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. — jury ordered white nationalist leaders and organizations to pay more than $26 million in damages Tuesday over violence that erupted during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
After a nearly monthlong civil trial, the jury in U.S. District
Court deadlocked on two key claims but found the white nationalists liable on four other counts in the lawsuit filed by nine people who suffered physical or emotional injuries during the two days of demonstrations.
Attorney Roberta Kaplan said the plaintiffs’ lawyers plan to refile the suit so a new jury can decide the two claims this jury could not reach a verdict on. She called the amount of damages awarded from the others counts “eye opening”
“That sends a loud message,” Kaplan said.
The verdict, though mixed, is a rebuke to the white nationalist movement, particularly for the two dozen individuals and organizations who were accused in a federal lawsuit of orchestrating violence against African Americans, Jews and others in a planned conspiracy.
White nationalist leader Richard Spencer vowed to appeal, saying the “entire theory of that verdict is fundamentally flawed.”
He said plaintiffs’ attorneys made it clear before the trial that they wanted to use the case to bankrupt him and other defendants.
“It was activism by means of lawsuits, and that is absolutely outrageous,” he said. “I’m doing fine right now because I had kind of accepted in my heart the worst that could happen. I had hope, of course, but I’m not terribly surprised or crestfallen.”
Lawyers for the plaintiffs invoked a 150-year-old law passed after the Civil War to shield freed slaves from violence and protect their civil rights. Commonly known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, the law contains a provision that allows private citizens to sue other citizens for civil rights violations.
Hundreds of white nationalists descended on Charlottesville for the rally on Aug. 11 and 12, 2017, ostensibly to protest city plans to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.