$2.2 million in damages for Planned Parenthood

A federal jury in San Francisco awarded Planned Parenthood more than $2.2 million in damages Friday against antiabortion activists who posed as fetal researchers to enter abortionrights meetings and secretly record participants, rejecting the activists’ claims that they were acting as undercover journalists to expose wrongdoing.

After a monthlong trial, the jurors found that David Daleiden, his employee Sandra Merritt and their collaborators had violated state and federal laws against trespassing, fraud, clandestine recording and racketeering, as well as the nondisclosure agreements the two signed before entering the meetings. Jurors awarded Planned Parenthood more than $500,000 as compensation for the intrusions and $870,000 in punitive damages. Under federal racketeering law, most of the compensation will be tripled.

Jurors also concluded that both Daleiden and Merritt had violated a California criminal law against secretly recording conversations without consent.

They both face criminal charges under that law in a separate proceeding in San Francisco Superior Court. Friday’s verdict has no direct impact on the criminal prosecution, which has a higher standard of proof, but it suggested that the defendants have a formidable task in justifying their actions to a jury.

Daleiden, who heads an organization called the Center for Medical Progress, and Merritt entered the abortion conferences by posing as researchers for a nonexistent company called BioMax Procurement Services. The conferences included the annual meetings of the National Abortion Federation in San Francisco in 2014 and in Baltimore in 2015, as well as Planned Parenthood gatherings.

They posted videos of the conversations, starting in 2015. Planned Parenthood said the videos were heavily edited to create the appearance that participants were selling fetal parts, and resulted in online harassment and death threats. After the postings, a number of states withdrew funding for Planned Parenthood.

One of the speakers recorded without his knowledge was affiliated with a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs that was attacked by an antiabortion gunman in November 2015, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a ruling in a related case. Three people were killed.

Daleiden denied any distortions and said he and Merritt were acting in the tradition of journalists who go undercover to expose crimes. His lawyers have argued that the ban on secret recordings does not apply to tapings that reveal criminal conduct. They also contended that many of the recorded conversations were actually in public places, including restaurants, and would have been overheard by others.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick III told the opposing parties and the jury that the trial was not about abortion, or any of Planned Parenthood’s alleged practices, but only about the defendants’ conduct. Jurors found that dozens of conversations were illegally recorded and that the defendants had violated the laws of

California and Maryland as well as federal laws.

They also assessed damages against Albin Rhomberg and Troy Newman, longtime antiabortion activists who are board members of the Center for Medical Progress.

After the jury verdict, defense lawyers accused Orrick of unfairly narrowing the scope of the trial, and said they would appeal.

“The trial was not about finding the truth,” said Merritt’s lawyer, Horatio Mihet. “We’re confident that this is not the last word.”

Daleiden’s attorney, Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society, said Daleiden was being punished for “his investigation into criminal activity by America’s largest abortion provider.”

Planned Parenthood celebrated the verdict.

“David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress intentionally waged a multiyear illegal effort to manufacture a malicious campaign against Planned Parenthood,” Alexis McGill Johnston, the organization’s acting president, said in a statement. “The jury recognized today that those behind the campaign broke the law in order to advance their goals of banning safe, legal abortion in this country.”

In another development Friday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Orrick’s 2016 injunction prohibiting Daleiden and his company from posting any more secret recordings of abortion providers. After the postings continued, Orrick found Daleiden and his lawyers in contempt of court in 2017.

In challenging the injunction, issued in a suit by the National Abortion Federation, Daleiden and the company argued that the federation had not been harmed by their violation of the confidentiality pledge Daleiden had signed before entering the meetings.

But the court, in a 30 ruling, said the federation was forced to spend more on security because of “the marked increase in harassment, threats, and violence toward reproductive health providers caused by the publication of (the) recordings.”