s skippy the bush kangaroo: making money the old-fashioned way...via lawsuits!

skippy the bush kangaroo



Wednesday, March 31, 2010

making money the old-fashioned way...via lawsuits!

this is disgusting:
al snyder's son died in iraq in may of 2006. members of the rabidly anti-gay westboro baptist church picketed his son matthew's funeral, causing immense personal, emotional pain for him, his family and their friends.

snyder won a $5 million civil lawsuit against the church and the phelps family, but it was recently tossed out of a federal court. to add insult to injury, the court has now ordered snyder to pay all of the church's legal fees:
baltimore — lawyers for the father of a marine who died in iraq say a court has ordered him to pay legal costs for the anti-gay protesters who picketed his son's funeral.

the protesters are led by fred phelps of westboro baptist church. albert snyder of york, pa., had won a $5 million verdict against phelps, but it was thrown out on appeal.

the u.s. supreme court agreed earlier this month to consider whether the protesters' provocative messages, which include phrases like "thank god for dead soldiers," are protected by the first amendment.

lawyers say snyder already is struggling to come up with the fees associated with filing the brief with the high court. read on...
worse, in the big picture, this is apparently how fred phelps & the church of unmitigated hatred makes their living. the very astute aimai comments @ balloon juice:
its important to remember that the phelps’ make their living off this stuff—getting paid in the form of “legal fees” is, in fact, the way they earn their money. none of their speech/protests are geared at actually doing anything political, or even (necessarily) expressing actual views on political or social subjects. their goal is to get someone in the temporary audience to offend, strike, or sue them and then they counter sue for damages. google “fred phelps conman” and you’ll see the whole sorry story. the whole family is a set of insane, abusive litigants who travel the country in order to gin up legal cases that they can win for money.

the free speech issues, as others have said upthread, are really murky. i object to people being allowed to protest other people’s private lives, or private griefs. after a lot of struggle we sort of got a zone of privacy around abortion clinics because of the abusive hectoring of the anti abortion crowd and their willingness to use private persons for political argument. i think a zone of privacy around funeral homes or cemeteries during funerals is also appropriate. but the only way to handle the phelps clan is to structure events so that its more costly to them to go and protest than the money they earn attacking counterprotestors or winning suits. ignoring them actually is the best thing to do. anything else runs the risk that innocent bystanders, like the snyder family, will suffer greater harm.
we've googled that for you.

back to the case @ hand, here's the site for a legal fund set up for mr. snyder, if you'd care to donate to his cause (ie, paying the stupid court fees).

(thx & a tip o' the kangaroo tail to crooks&liars for this story link!)
posted by skippy at 12:13 PM |

5 Comments:

Righteous Christians (yeah, I know, an oxymoron) should tar and feather those assholes and run 'em out of town--or out of the country.
commented by Blogger Phil, 4:10 PM PDT  
Just heard that Oral Bill, the Fox News blowhard, is going to do the right thing and pay this guy's legal bills. He's doing it for the wrong reason of course -- so that he can trumpet that he "loves the troops" -- but is it all that bad when someone does right for the wrong reason?

-- Badtux the Law Penguin
commented by Blogger BadTux, 6:32 PM PDT  
I don't quite get it how phelps ties being gay to military deaths, since they currently kick gay people out of the military??

But as much as I loathe war & how the government uses soldiers as pawns to do their empire dirty work, the death of a soldier (and any of the death & suffering involved in war), is the bottom line reason why war is horrific.

When lives are lost as a result, it is a deep and personal loss & tragedy. Parents burying children, or a whole chain of lives get changed forever because of the loss.
The funeral is the peak of the crisis of that loss, and that circumstance should be considered sacred & given the utmost respect.

They died in war, they deserve to be buried, and rest in peace.

phelps seems to be missing both a soul & consciousness. This movement to do this crap seems to be limited to just his family.

they should draft phelps & co to work the front lines in Iraq or Afghanistan.
commented by Blogger Fran, 1:50 AM PDT  
Googling that this guy as a con man is a bunch of BS. Sure, he's a pathetic excuse for a human being and I'd be quite glad if he burst into flames but the courts aren't awarding court costs when there are no actual costs. As for the court's choice to award him court costs, it's easy to understand the reasoning. If Wal-Mart, or an employer, or a Big Bank, or Haliburton were being protested against in some fashion, all they would have to do is bankrupt their detractors with lawsuits. Doesn't matter if they win, they just bury them in legal fees which Big Pockets won't feel at all.

Get restraining orders, urge your local politicians to change the laws regarding protests around funerals, cemeteries and memorial services, etc. Heck, if BushCo was able to create No Free Speech zones at political rallies, then I think we can do the same to respect mourning friends and families .

FRAN -- Assuming they're not twisted attention whores (which is a lot to assume), these nutjobs think that dead soldiers are God's punishment for America's "tolerance" of gays. If I believed in God, I suspect I'd believe that Phelps and his minions are God's punishment for America's tolerance of religious extremists.
commented by Anonymous sean, 8:04 AM PDT  
sean~ Phelps and his minions are God's punishment for America's tolerance of religious extremists.


Fair enough!

But frankly, I am sick of how the courts are twisting around the core meaning of free speech.

Free speech means the right for media to disallow a legitimate candidate from appearing in a debate. (Kuciniched).

Free speech means corporations can stuff money into politicians pockets, while they are voting on a subject directly related (in the real world, that would be considered a conflict of interest & unethical, if not illegal).

Free speech means staging a disruptive & unrelated protest at a military funeral.
commented by Blogger Fran, 9:40 AM PDT  

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