Quote :

" A federal jury in Baltimore, Maryland, Wednesday awarded $10.9 million to a father of a Marine whose funeral was picketed by members of a fundamentalist church carrying signs blaming soldiers' deaths on America's tolerance of homosexuals. The family of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder -- who was killed in a vehicle accident in Iraq's Anbar province in 2006 -- sued the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, and its leaders for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/31/funeral.protest/index.html

I hate these guys as much as anyone else, but I'm not how I feel about people being fined for protesting. I don't know if anyone else knows more details about this case, but I'd be interested in hearing the juries reasoning for fining people for picketing, no matter how objectionable these people are.

Quote :

""As far as their picketing goes, they want to do it in front of a courthouse, they want to do it in a public park, I could care less. But I couldn't let them get away with doing this to our military," Al Snyder (father of Lance Coproal Matthew Snyder) said."

I'm wondering if the funeral was on private property and therefore that was the basis for the judgement. The article says that several states have passed laws prohibiting protesting at funerals, but I'm not sure if Maryland is one of those states.

11/1/2007 10:27:37 AM

yeah i think these protesters are pretty scummy, but i don't see what could justify a lawsuit for simply protesting.

11/1/2007 10:29:28 AM

^

Quote :

"defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.""

11/1/2007 10:32:55 AM

As long as the rights of people to protest other things aren't hindered I say bury these guys under the jail.

11/1/2007 10:36:22 AM

Yeah, but that opens the door to everyone suing because someone said something that caused them "emotional distress." While this is an obviously egregious example of that, the law doesn't differentiate speech based on how popular or unpopular it is.

Invasion of privacy I can kind of buy, but I guess that depends on how much privacy the court determines you can expect at a funeral.

Let me make it clear I am NOT remotely defending WBC, but I've got more questions than answers with regard to the 1st Amendment.

11/1/2007 10:39:42 AM

Now you will receive us,
receive the arsonist.

11/1/2007 10:41:36 AM

they're lucky they didn't get the crap kicked out of em for such disrespectful and ignorant things that they've been doing at soldiers' funerals. if my brother or my good friend or anyone close to me had died in the war and people showed up at a funeral like that... just no excuse...

11/1/2007 10:51:27 AM

These people should have been repeatedly arrested for disrupting the peace or some other made up charge, but $11 million is ridiculous.

11/1/2007 10:53:34 AM

It's sad to say, but if the courts have any sort of logic, they will overturn the ruling in favor of WBC.

11/1/2007 10:55:03 AM

I would love nothing more than to see the WBC be destroyed by an F5 tornado during the middle of sunday services, but I am also skeptical of this ruling.

and since every other member Fred Phelps' family (aka WBC) has a law degree, don't expect this to be resolved any time soon.

11/1/2007 10:56:58 AM

i'm about as pro personal liberties as you can get but...

Quote :

"As long as the rights of people to protest other things aren't hindered I say bury these guys under the jail."

11/1/2007 11:02:09 AM

^

11/1/2007 11:14:01 AM

Quote :

"i'm about as pro personal liberties as you can get"

Apparently you're not. This decision strikes me as a huge blow to free speech, and the defamation/privacy/distress grounds sound really dubious to me. I shudder at the idea that this might not be overturned and will be used as precedence to prevent free speech in the future. That being said, I would've looked the other way if someone decided to take a hammer and smashed these people upside the head.

11/1/2007 11:21:31 AM

Read the legal complaint. The defamation and distress portions of the lawsuit are based on comments made by Westboro Baptist that were specifically directed (by name) at Snyder and his family. It was not based on Westboro's general anti-homosexual protests.

The invasion of privacy is based on the fact that Lance Corporal Snyder was not a public figure, his funeral was not a public event, and Westboro was not invited to the funeral.

I don't think this is a free speech issue, at least not in the sense that this case could be applied to protests and statements in general.

[Edited on November 1, 2007 at 11:43 AM. Reason : ]

11/1/2007 11:41:33 AM

^ EXACTLY.
They were picketing at a FUNERAL. This isn't an open to the public thing, it's a private event. Then, they made the attacks personal, instead of a generalized protest.
They still had their freedom of speech, but now they have to face the consequences of choosing to make that speech.

11/1/2007 12:05:04 PM

^^ That is what I was wondering and why I'm hesitant to pass angry judgement on this verdict. The article wasn't particularly clear about the legal details in this case.

11/1/2007 12:09:38 PM

^^^ That makes me feel a lot better about this.

Also, what happens in civil cases when you lose way more than you could ever pay? I doubt these hucklebucks could ever cough up 1/10 of this.

[Edited on November 1, 2007 at 12:12 PM. Reason : .]

11/1/2007 12:11:59 PM

i wonder if they can garnish wages and whatnot

11/1/2007 12:13:15 PM

Something definitly deserved to happen to those guys but $11 Million is absolutely ridiculous. Although if Slut Bag Louise can get $6.2 Million from McDonalds corporation b.c she allowed her manager to fondle her than this guy can get $11Mill for something this disrespectful.

btw Hitler had it all wrong. forget the jews he should have sent all those crazy ass Evangelical Christians to the gas chambers.

[Edited on November 1, 2007 at 1:26 PM. Reason : a]

11/1/2007 1:24:21 PM

At most, t3h g0v should be allowed to use force to remove protesters from funerals.

Fining them millions of dollars strikes me as absurd. I strongly oppose legal penalties for defamation and the like.

11/1/2007 2:34:25 PM

Quote :

"Quote : "i'm about as pro personal liberties as you can get" Apparently you're not. This decision strikes me as a huge blow to free speech, and the defamation/privacy/distress grounds sound really dubious to me. I shudder at the idea that this might not be overturned and will be used as precedence to prevent free speech in the future. That being said, I would've looked the other way if someone decided to take a hammer and smashed these people upside the head. "

we already have reasonable limits to free speech

I see no problem drawing the line with these people as far as a limit to the freedom of assembly or speech.

what they are doing is blatantly vulgar and disrespectful to our entire society

[Edited on November 1, 2007 at 2:40 PM. Reason : .]

11/1/2007 2:40:30 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church

The guy that founded this church must have been raped in the butt by a guy growing up or something. Their preoccupation with the homosexual community is fucking ridiculous.

11/1/2007 2:52:21 PM

Quote :

"what they are doing is blatantly vulgar and disrespectful to our entire society"

precisely the kind of speech that needs to be protected. If they are fined at all, it should not be based on our opinion of their opinions, but on the question of: did they violate someone elses rights?

For example:

Quote :

"The invasion of privacy is based on the fact that Lance Corporal Snyder was not a public figure, his funeral was not a public event, and Westboro was not invited to the funeral."

Now that, I'll buy. So long as they were protesting on public property then they'd be kosher, but if they were invading someone elses privacy . . . not so much.

[Edited on November 1, 2007 at 2:58 PM. Reason : t]

11/1/2007 2:55:06 PM

Quote :

"Although if Slut Bag Louise can get $6.2 Million from McDonalds corporation b.c she allowed her manager to fondle her"

dude

you're still ate up about that?

jesus.

11/1/2007 2:55:30 PM

From Wikipedia:

Quote :

"The group maintains that God hates homosexuals above all other kinds of "sinners"[7] and that homosexuality should be a capital crime."

Harsh...

[Edited on November 1, 2007 at 10:10 PM. Reason : ]

11/1/2007 10:09:43 PM

Poster child case for tort reform. No way they inflicted this much damage

11/1/2007 10:33:28 PM

there are a helluva lot better potential posters than this

and i think they should've long since been arrested over and over until they either got the point or got thrown in the butt hut for a while

or i would also be ok with turning a blind eye and allowing people to beat dey asses, saying "fuck 'em, they fucked with the bull and got the horns."

and ideologically, i'm against sueing them

but they're such an egregiously bad example that i'm cool with anything bad that happens to them. i'd take a week or two of leave and go personally make it no longer worth their while to continue, but I'm not interested in the legal troubles that would follow for me.

11/1/2007 10:49:43 PM

^yeah, i think they inflicted roughly $3,514.23 of emotional damage, not $11 million

they need to make a standardized emotional distress gage, which should be used in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event

11/1/2007 10:51:49 PM

i don't really give a shit what the number is.

no, i don't think they did $11,000,000 worth of emotional harm, but as far as I'm concerned, anything bad that happens to them is a good thing, and the worse it is, the better.

11/1/2007 10:53:28 PM

i would like to bring back Old Testament style justice just long enough to round the entire WBC up to be publicly stoned and/or beaten and driven into the desert to die a torturous death from untended wounds and general exposure .

then I would repeal the Old Testament justice and go back to having modern civil rights and freedom of speech and shit.

11/2/2007 2:12:45 AM

If I could lawfully do it, you'd better believe that there would already be a sizeable pile of dead WBC members.

[Edited on November 2, 2007 at 2:18 AM. Reason : adfasd]

[Edited on November 2, 2007 at 2:18 AM. Reason : asdf]

11/2/2007 2:16:33 AM

We can only dare to dream....






[Edited on November 2, 2007 at 2:23 AM. Reason : ]

11/2/2007 2:22:44 AM

Letting anger overwhelm reason is dangerous, folks.

11/2/2007 11:46:46 AM

Quote :

"Apparently you're not. This decision strikes me as a huge blow to free speech, and the defamation/privacy/distress grounds sound really dubious to me. I shudder at the idea that this might not be overturned and will be used as precedence to prevent free speech in the future. That being said, I would've looked the other way if someone decided to take a hammer and smashed these people upside the head. "

Well I guess you're not that pro personal liberties either.

11/2/2007 12:17:01 PM

bttt by request

^^ oh no, i've reasoned it out, and my feelings regarding them are calculated, not a result of blind rage or anger. I mean, they piss me off, too, but I don't even need that to want to kill every one of them, and/or throw them all in jail, and/or fine them huge amounts of money until they can no longer afford to keep doing what they're doing. I am also not so blinded by my pro-free speech & civil liberty ideology to the point that I don't recognize that exterminating or at least effectively neutering these vermin would be a huge net gain for the human race, at a cost to no one except the WBC, which deserves whatever it gets.

8/6/2008 5:41:08 PM

This is why we need tort reform. They spun the wheel to get this award amount

8/6/2008 9:16:58 PM

We need tort reform, but not because of this. Anything bad that happens to those shitheads is a good thing.

8/6/2008 10:32:14 PM

We need to fork up a few $ and send some attactive woman over there and start flirting with the women of that church. I'm sure someone has to have some "bi-curiosity" and then have someone take pics/video and then discredit them.

Any volunteers?

8/6/2008 10:39:29 PM

^or get evan to go try his luck with the guys.

8/6/2008 10:44:32 PM

They are like irl message board trolls. They are my heroes.

8/6/2008 11:10:23 PM

Quote :

"We need tort reform, but not because of this. Anything bad that happens to those shitheads is a good thing."

I pretty much agree with this here statement.

8/6/2008 11:12:11 PM

i think what the WBC did was wrong and should not go unpunished, however, 11 million is ridiculous.

I think the marines in mourning at the funeral beating these bible-thumpers asses would have sufficed. Of course one of the baptist zealots would probably have cried all the way to the court house to collect their own 11 million dollarl tort suit.

[Edited on August 7, 2008 at 12:31 AM. Reason : l]

8/7/2008 12:30:03 AM

sure, it's ridiculous

but whatever...if it had been 10.9 billion, that would've been even better. there is nothing bad that can happen to them that wouldn't be a good thing.

I don't think the victims deserve 10.9 million dollars for what the the WBC did to them...I'm just glad to see it because it's something bad happening to the WBC, and that's all I need to know. In practical terms, hopefully such a financial hit will hamper their ability to act like shitheads on such a grand scale.

[Edited on August 7, 2008 at 1:24 AM. Reason : asdfad]

8/7/2008 1:16:37 AM

Quote :

"While this is an obviously egregious example of that, the law doesn't differentiate speech based on how popular or unpopular it is."

That's why we have judges and jurors.

8/7/2008 1:21:16 AM

If we insist on having punitive damages, then they should go to the state treasury.

8/7/2008 1:58:12 AM

that would be fine, too.

they could take 11 million from them and make a big bonfire with it for all I care.


best option of all would be to fine them into hopeless bankruptcy and give the money to wounded warrior groups, etc.

[Edited on August 7, 2008 at 2:03 AM. Reason : and have a homo deliver the check, just out of spite.]

8/7/2008 2:03:13 AM

Baptists in general are all weird fucktards.

8/7/2008 6:36:11 AM

I hope people realize that this group of fuckwads claiming to be Westboro Baptist Church are in no way connected to the real Baptist community and are just a family of nutjob lawyers who run their own church that their father started.

I mean I'm Methodist and think that some of the Baptist stuff is a little ridiculous (like OMFG NO DRINKING OR DANCING EVAR!) but the Baptist Convention doesn't sanction this shit, and they aren't associated with any church. They basically are homosexual terrorists using a couple of brief excerpts from the Bible to justify their heinous actions, much like Islamic extremists justify their own actions with small passage of the Qu'ran. Neither group represents what 95% of Christians or Muslims believe, but the whole of each group is condemned because of the actions of the few.

8/7/2008 7:44:16 AM

Axl highlighted the important point here:

Quote :

""defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.""

These things are not protected speech. I'm not saying they should or shouldn't be, but it's been long held that they're not, and therefore the judge has every legal right to fine Westboro

8/7/2008 9:21:36 AM

no one doubts that they should get fined, but $10.9 million was some out-of-the-ass number that is just as bad as any other frivolous lawsuit that people complain about


fuck, is my girlfriend going to sue me for $5 million for intentionally inflicting emotional distress when I break up with her?

8/7/2008 9:39:47 AM