Written by In the Sines v. Kessler civil trial pertaining to the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, there were six counts to the action.
Count 1 was a federal civil rights claim, alleging a racially motivated violent conspiracy.
Count 2 was a federal civil rights claim, alleging defendants knew about a racially motivated violent conspiracy, and did not thing to stop it.
Count 3 was a Virginia Civil Conspiracy claim, alleging a conspiracy to violate any of a half dozen Virginia criminal statutes, including the Virginia Hate Crimes statute, which allows liability for “violence, intimidation, or harassment”.
Count 4 was a claim under the same Virginia Hate Crimes statute, no conspiracy element.
Counts 5 and 6 pertained only to Defendant James Fields, and since fields pleaded guilty to murder, not much could be done for him, so they will be beyond the scope of what I aim to say here.
The jury did not reach a verdict on Counts 1 and 2. The Jury found us all liable on Counts 3 and 4.
The substance of my appeal before the 4th Circuit is that since we were not found liable on counts 1 and 2, our liability on counts 3 and 4 must have been for something other than a racially motivated violent conspiracy. Since we were sued for a racially motivated violent conspiracy, and only defended against that allegation, we cannot be held liable for that which we were not sued for. This is obvious. Since counts 3 and 4 carry a “harassment” theory of liability, this would allow us to be held liable for speech, and we were repeatedly admonished by the court for mentioning freedom of speech, because we were told this was about violence, not speech.
Apparently it was, however, and we were denied the capacity to defend against this.
In the appeal before the 4th Circuit, our cases were consolidated and split in two. All the defendants with lawyers on one team, and me and Jeff Schoep on another.
The represented defendants did not argue that the verdict was faulty. They actually admitted liability, then quibbled over apportionment of dollar amounts.
Predictably, they got smoked.
Reading from the Memorandum of the 4th Circuit;
In August 2017,a group of protesters traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia, to demonstrate against the City’s decision to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. The organizers called this event the “Unite the Right” rally, or the “Battle of Charlottesville.” What followed was a harrowing weekend in our Nation’s history.
As a later civil jury trial proved, these protesters (among whom were white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis) conspired to commit racially motivated violence to, in part, “defend Western civilization and white men against perceived enemies—specifically, Jewish persons, Black persons, and their white gentile traitor allies.” Sines v. Kessler, No. 3:17-cv-00072, 2022 WL 18026336, at *23 (W.D. Va.Dec. 30,2022) (cleaned up). The protesters “sought violence, planned for violence, sparked violence, engaged in violence, and afterwards, glorified the violence” committed. Id. at*33.
Upon receiving news of this judgement, Nathan Damigo posted the following to Telegram;
I just received news right now that the 4th circuit has issued a ruling on my appeal. From my attorney…
“You’re ruling from the 4th circuit. We lose on joint and several liability. On punitives you got a split decision. The cap does apply but on a per plaintiff basis. So punitives still reduced still a few million now.”
So while everything we had challenged was not ruled on in our favor, we did obtain a substantial victory. I will provide further updates once I have a better grasp of the ruling in its entirety.
How this amounts to a “substantial victory” for anyone but the crooks who attacked us in broad daylight, remains a mystery to me.
The whole entire point of the case was that we went for a permitted demonstration and were attacked by violent criminals who then used the media and the legal system as part of their criminal enterprise.
The predatory narrative has now been read as fact into an appellate court decision.
My appeal still pends before the 4th circuit.
There’s plenty in the news, and more for me to say about this, when we meet as every Wednesday, at 9:30pm US Eastern.
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