Recalling $12.5M judgment against local racists

On Oct. 22, 1990, a jury in a Portland, Ore., civil case decided that Fallbrook resident Tom Metzger, his son John and their group, White Aryan Resistance (WAR), were responsible for inciting a group of skinheads to the racial violence that resulted in the beating death of a young Black man.

To collect the judgment, the attorneys foreclosed on Metzger’s five-bedroom house in Fallbrook, and took his television repair tools and his trailer, which he had used for recruiting.

From The San Diego Union, Tuesday, Oct. 23, 1990:

METZGER, 3 OTHERS LOSE LAWSUIT, MUST PAY $12.5 MILLION

Jurors took just one afternoon to decide yesterday that Tom and John Metzger should pay more than $10 million for their role in the killing two years ago of an Ethiopian man who was beaten to death by skinheads.

In all, the family of Mulugeta Seraw was awarded $12.5 million in punitive and compensatory damages, with the bulk of the money to be paid by the Fallbrook father and son who lead the white supremacy movement that the skinheads followed.

A jubilant Morris Dees, chief attorney for the plaintiff, hailed the verdict as marking “a new season for justice in the Northwest.”

Expecting that the judgment will financially strangle the 52-year-old Fallbrook appliance repairman and his 22-yearold son, Dees said he and his colleagues will move swiftly to seize all Metzger’s assets, including his Sunbeam Lane home of 23 years.

“We’re sending a moving van over to his house and take it over,” he said in a news conference shortly after the 5 p.m. verdict. “This cleans his clock.”

The jury of 10 whites, a Japanese-American and a Hawaiian deliberated for less than four hours before voting 11-1 that Metzger and his son conspired to set the stage for the violence that killed Seraw and that the death was caused by their reckless selection of an agent sent to Portland to organize the East Side White Pride skinheads. Nine votes were needed to find fault.

Jurors granted the full amount sought by the Southern

Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, which brought the civil suit on behalf of the Seraw family.

Tom Metzger, a former California grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), was assessed $5 million in punitive damages, WAR was assessed $3 million and John Metzger was ordered to pay $1 million. Two of the three skinheads in prison for Seraw’s murder were co-defendants in the case and each was ordered to pay $500,000.

The jury also agreed to award $2.5 million in compensatory damages that Dees asked during the closing days of the trial. Assessment of that money will be divided among the Metzgers and the two skinhead defendants, though the bulk will be paid by Tom Metzger.

Jurors told Judge Ancer Haggerty that they did not want to discuss the case with the media, though one juror last night said the reason the decision came so rapidly was because “we got all the information from both sides and we made the decision.”

Tom Metzger was calm as the verdict was read by Haggerty and said later that it was of little importance.