Commentary and Analysis: The Sines v. Kessler Lawfare Jury Verdict
As I stated in my November 19, 2021 article, in my view – what I think is the view of any impartial person – the Sines v. Kessler litigation is ideological lawfare. On November 24, 2021, the jury reached a verdict in that case. I now offer some initial thoughts about that verdict, with the caveat that many critical motions and rulings will likely be made in the next few weeks that could greatly affect the future path of the litigation.
Background. On October 11, 2017, 10 plaintiffs commenced the Sines v. Kessler litigation in federal court in Charlottesville against 25 defendants. On October 25, 2021, more than four years later – four years of expensive, time-consuming, stressful litigation – the case went to a jury. By this time, there were nine plaintiffs and 17 defendants (eight had defaulted or never been served). The nine plaintiffs alleged six claims against all or a subset of the 17 defendants, namely two federal claims under the 1871 Civil Rights Act (42 U.S.C. Sections 1985(3) and 1986) for conspiracy to commit racial violence (all plaintiffs against all defendants); a claim under Virginia state law for civil conspiracy to violate numerous Virginia state laws (all plaintiffs against all defendants); a claim under a Virginia statute prohibiting racial, religious, or ethnic harassment or violence (two plaintiffs against five defendants); and two claims, one for assault and the other for intentional infliction of emotional distress, brought by six plaintiffs against defendant James Fields. Plaintiffs sought both compensatory and punitive damages on all six of their claims and attorney fees on their two federal civil rights claims.
On the afternoon of November 24 – one day before Thanksgiving – the jury, consisting of four Black and eight White jurors, after deliberating for more than three days (and causing concerns of a jury deadlock), rendered its verdict. It did so by means of a problematic jury verdict form that bore a resemblance to a Rubik’s Cube. The jury deadlocked on the two federal civil rights claims and left those portions of the verdict form blank. On the third claim, for civil conspiracy under Virginia law, the jury found against all 17 defendants. As to two of the plaintiffs, however – Elizabeth Sines and the Reverend Seth Wispelwey – the jury found no compensatory damages. As to the other seven, it found $1 each in compensatory damages. It then awarded $500,000 in punitive damages against each of the 12 individual defendants and $1,000,000 in punitive damages against each of the five organizational defendants.
On the fourth count, for racial or ethnic harassment, the jury found for the two plaintiffs, awarding each $250,000 in compensatory damages and imposing $200,000 in punitive damages against each of the five defendants. On the fifth and sixth claims against James Fields, the jury awarded compensatory damages to the six plaintiffs in various amounts ranging from $0 to $318,575 and imposed $6,000,000 in punitive damages against Fields on each count.
Analysis and Comment. Articles in the mainstream media describing the verdict – stating, for example, that the jury awarded $25 million in damages – while accurate in some respects are incomplete in others. In my judgment, there are several substantial grounds for reducing the verdict to a small fraction of the $25 million amount. These grounds include:
The Virginia Statutory Cap on Punitive Damages. Section 8.01-38.1. of the Virginia Code provides as follows:
In any action accruing on or after July 1, 1988, including an action for medical malpractice under Chapter 21.1 (§ 8.01-581.1 et seq.), the total amount awarded for punitive damages against all defendants found to be liable shall be determined by the trier of fact. In no event shall the total amount awarded for punitive damages exceed $350,000. The jury shall not be advised of the limitation prescribed by this section. However, if a jury returns a verdict for punitive damages in excess of the maximum amount specified in this section, the judge shall reduce the award and enter judgment for such damages in the maximum amount provided by this section.
By its plain language, the statute caps the plaintiffs’ punitive damages claims against all defendants at $350,000. Application of this cap would leave the two $250,000 compensatory damages award in Count Four and the compensatory damages awards against Fields in Counts Five and Six, but would substantially reduce the total damages. My research has not yet disclosed how the $350,000 in punitive damages would be allocated among the 17 defendants and nine plaintiffs, an important question the jury verdict form does not address.
Due Process Limitations. Federal and state constitutional due process restrictions impose significant limitations on punitive damages awards. More specifically, they impose several proportionality requirements.
The first is a reasonable ratio, consistent with the purpose of punitive damage awards, between actual and punitive damages. My far-from-exhaustive research indicates that in Virginia, as in federal courts and many other state jurisdictions subject to similar due process restraints, while there is no fixed ratio, ratios above 20X – 30X draw increased judicial scrutiny. The ratios on the jury’s Count Three award, however, are astronomic: 500,000,000 to one, if I’m counting my zeros right. Even if the punitive damages award was reduced to $350,000, the ratios would still be very high, depending on how the $350,000 was allocated between the different counts and defendants. So this proportionality rule could provide a strong basis for further reducing the punitive damages award, at least as to the third count.
The second proportionality requirement is a reasonable relationship between the punitive damages award and the reprehensibility of the defendants’ conduct. Application of this requirement to the jury’s award raises difficult and important First Amendment questions. What was “reprehensible” about the defendants’ conduct? As to the third count, in which the plaintiffs were awarded only $1 in compensatory damages (or none at all) and accordingly were found to have suffered no physical harm, the “reprehensibility” must have been entirely in the defendants’ message. But our courts recite time and again that the First Amendment protects expression that others may find reprehensible. As Justice Holmes stated in his U.S. v. Schwimmer (1928) dissent, the core purpose of the First Amendment is to protect “freedom for the thought we hate.” So awarding large punitive damages – or any at all – based on the “reprehensibility” of the defendants’ message should offend a court’s constitutional sensibilities.
A third due process ratio is between the punitive damages award and the defendants’ ability to pay. The Supreme Court has made clear that punitive damages are allowed only to admonish and chastise wayward defendants, not destroy them. In this case, large punitive damage awards could cripple many if not all the defendants.
In summary, there are many grounds for challenging the punitive damages awards. These are in addition to many other possible grounds for overturning the verdict, including the court’s evidentiary rulings.
Procedural Issues. The jury’s deadlock on the first two counts creates considerable procedural complexity in moving the case forward. Post-judgment motions – such as a motion for remittitur to reduce the punitive damages award – can be filed only after entry of final judgment and no judgment can be entered on the jury’s verdict until all claims have been resolved unless the court so directs under Federal Rule 54(b). It is not clear whether the plaintiffs would agree to a Rule 54(b) motion requesting the court to enter judgment as to the four counts that the jury did decide.
What does seem likely is that the plaintiffs will seek to refile as to the two deadlocked counts, thereby, if they succeed, adding yet another lengthy and expensive chapter to this already brutal lawfare.
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There’s about as much prospect of getting costs out of these defendants as them getting a win in the courts. The best way to destroy the law fare avenue is to keep bankrupting the legal cases with wave after wave of pennyless defendants a white working class financial Kamikaze force.
It’s what the right does in the UK.
Agree with the sentiment but in Virginia/US generally it presumably may be the case that so far as concerns the defendants they cannot escape through personal bankruptcy any liability under the judgments as finally determined; so if that is correct they face lifetime penal servitude under wage garnishing and so forth (source (iirc): Jared Howe / So to Speak – who’s not a lawyer, so unverified).
More generally as regards the article, it seems to be concerned mainly (only?) with quantum of damages “mitigation” and comes over as assuming there was real evidence to carry the claims/allegations. I think you can only fight fire with fire so if I’d been on the receiving end I’d have been conjecturing about counterclaims for conspiracy to interfere with constitutional rights (1st Am), striking down or suspending State laws consistent with same; (now) exploiting any evidence of professional standards breaches by plaintiff attorneys on aforesaid or anything else (disbar/clip their wings); exploring grounds for arguing breach of natural justice (procedural) through infringement of “audi alteram partem” since it’s preposterous that pro-bono teams of a score or more of city lawyers should be facing down penniless defendants. Latter aspect reminds of the judge quoted in G. Williams’ Learning the Law: “The law, like the Ritz Hotel, is open to all”.
Another example of judicial system termite rot:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/antifa-member-who-took-axe-senate-office-given-probation-and-his-axe-back
Further imagining makes me ponder whether tactics such as these could also ever run:
1. demand at trial starting to know from the judge / the jury whether any of them have at any time sworn a freemasonic oath or intoned the Jewish prayer of Kol Nidre; and if any has, demand further that such individual immediately recuse themselves; and
2. in a jury trial, expressly inform the jury of the right of jury nullification i.e. they may throw the case out irrespective of any direction by the judge and/or whatever the “law” purports to provide. (Criminal cases only in US?)
Overall, yet another illustration of how the Money Power is a fulcrum which they use to leverage the reach of their otherwise numerically inferior numbers.
Let’s cut to the chase. The verdict is another victory for the media. It was impossible to have an impartial jury, and in all probability, an impartial judge.
Agreed, thats why a volunteer force of white”Joe bag o doughnuts”is required to clog up their law fare machinery till such times as its blatantly obvious it’s a dead end.
The law be damned, this was a political case from the beginning to end. If there were such a thing as an honest, impartial legal process James Fields would never have been arrested and all of the other defendants would have had their indictments quashed. If there were such a thing as an honest judge with an ounce of courage this whole charade would have been brought to an end before it started and the scumbag lawyers responsible for it would have been severely sanctioned. The Governor and State Police Captain who conspired to violate the rights of the UTR protesters (who had a permit granted by a Federal judge) should also have been locked up.
Since the Government at all levels is viciously anti-White and uses the legal process to prosecute its enemies on the basis of race and politics and reward its friends by not prosecuting them for committing violent felonies (Antifa/BLM rioting) the legitimacy of the Government is gone. No White person is bound to respect the law anymore because it’s used as a political weapon against us, not to enforce ordered liberty by respecting due process, precedent, equal treatment, property rights etc. Whites need to do like a “Bronx Jury”, acquit on the basis of race in doubtful cases as long as the White defendant isn’t a monster who has obviously committed a heinous crime against anyone regardless of their race.
The old motto of “Equal Justice under Law” may have been honored only occasionally but the new motto of the so-called “Justice” Department is “Show Me the Man and I will show You the Crime”.
Agreed, The established authorities are now in the end game like emperors without clothes, they know it & are just desperately trying to keep a lid on the status quo before the retire or pushed out (hopefully) by diversity. In fact give me a multicultural jury anytime over a bunch of gullible boomers or liberals.
During my time as a frontline activist in London i faced down many Antifa mobs. And concluded they were a bunch of middle class idiots protected by the state at the behest of Bolshevik unions , they never got charged with any offences.
Writing/talking technical-theoretical legal-this-and-the-law-that IS PURE FARCE. You can’t have juries or judges who respect the “wording” or plain intent of any statue/law because absolutely everything is political in mad-dog-murka. The KR verdict was a one-off and it is clear that there were some who balked at returning a not-guilty verdict as it took an absurd FOUR DAYS to decide a self-defense case that was so obvious that it was a virtual “You can’t make this stuff up” event. Speaking of political, any high profile “trial” that involves a clear opportunity to smash the White population is assured of a mindless, spineless “jury” and a worthless, corrupt “judge.” Do we not know this by now? The McMichaels trial was as vile a show-trial debacle as has ever taken place in this disgusting SH. These men could have been every non-libtard’s brother, father, friend, or neighbor. We were all smashed in this evil staged act of persecution. We just haven’t been sent to prison for a life-time. And the message in it all is – “Oh…but it’s coming Mr. White man.”
” Writing/talking technical-theoretical legal-this-and-the-law-that IS PURE FARCE. You can’t have juries or judges who respect the “wording” or plain intent of any statue/law because absolutely everything is political in mad-dog-murka.”
Superb observation .
Clearly , it is not good for Whites to have their chosenhite jewmasterss monopolize their money currency systems , their school systems , their broadcast media systems , their central government systems , their propaganda systems , and more of the White world of enslavement . The jewmasterss effectively manage the thought processes of most everyone via the CIA controlled matrix .
Will USA Whites ever grasp the dire hazards to themselves of the jewmasterss monopolization of the world ? Do enough Whites even care about it ?
Hear hear
At least a few know the basic problem is monopoly. Of information, and of [fake] money.
I was raped by an Affirmative Action program, and I don’t use the word “rape” lightly. I went through the legal process and litigated, in order to achieve justice. There wasn’t any. Things were done to me that never would have been done to anyone with black or brown skin, and the Justice Department should have the word “Justice” in quotation marks.
We now have a distinctly anti-white government and anti-white legal system. I do not regard them as having any legitimacy at all, and we will have fewer and fewer protections as both become further politicized. It would be wise to prepare for the worst. And the most nauseating part of all of it is the pretense of equal treatment and equal justice while they’re busy brutalizing dissidents like the 650 January 6th demonstrators.
The guilty party here is the academic class–almost totally white in 1950, but not so today. These white academics failed in their duty to uphold the truth, which was the most important job they had.
You are too kind. The most important job they had was to keep Jews out of non- STEM Academe.
When a leader dons a uniform , he is not still supposed to look like a house painter.
I notice that you did not publish my latest comment. Perhaps you thought it was too “negative” or “off topic”. If so, I do not believe that to be true. It was critical in an analogous way of the behavior pattern of Whites to certain animals.
I have said before that the EuroX needs to be “bucked up”, toughened, and needs to find his balls and pants. This is a statistical statement. Do you for one minute think that warriors of the military kind use soft talk, avoid “dispiriting” admonishment and blunt talk to their apprentices? Well, I have been in and around the military almost my entire career and childhood, and it ain’t so.
For us to achieve salvation, which is secession and multiple self racially defined republics, we will need people of extreme durability, reliability, determination, and dedication.
One may have a tendency to speculate that this is contrary to Buddhism. No, Buddhism is an iron fist in a silk glove. The self discipline required and imposed is severe. Acceptance criteria for monks is very narrow and restricted. Corrections and amendments are unambiguous and rigorous.
It must be acknowledged that the average Asian-reference the Chinese and Japanese-is more mentally and psychologically resilient and better at adherence to a directed course despite oblique vectors than the EuropeanX. I will not extend that to the Eastern Into-European and genetically related Hindoo. Put crudely and simply, Western European man has been thoroughly pussified.
As I read the report from the latest American Renaissance Conference, I noted one RUUBEN KAALAP who lays down the optimum CHARACTER OF THE INDIVIDUAL. It seems Mr. Kaalap has been successful at navigating and interacting with reality in the world extant and aktuell.. He has organized a political party in Estonia (lovely people), and is member of the legislative body.
I quote the author(s) description of Mr. Kaalap’s prescription:
Nota bene the Vertical Dimension as described, i.,e, the Inner Man, the one who all depends on to make things happen. This has been MY CONSISTENT THEME AND FOCUS HERE FOR A NUMBER OF ITERATIONS.
I believe you have erred in not publishing my comments. This reflects a personal and idiosyncratic decision by and individual rather than a thoughtful, broader consideration of relevance and utility for the greater numbers. If it is seemingly objectionable, then let the reader feedback be a factor
Typically in other venues, my “Like” and Up Votes are 2 to 3 times my postings. My perspectives and thoughts can be channeled elsewhere.
POUPON MARX–
WHOLLY in agreement with you vis-a-vis the decayed manhood of Western Civilization. I can’t imagine the Americans of 1776 tolerating the incredible outrages now heaped daily on Europeans and Euroamericans–still less the Spartans doing so, or the Romans of the Republic, or the Spaniards of the Reconquista, etc., etc.
And that’s a knotty problem, because, as La Rochefoucauld points out, the one defect of ours we can do nothing about is our weakness. Makes sense–since getting rid of the weakness requires strength. It MAY mean that, like everything else on this planet and the planet itself, we really ARE on our way out–courtesy of the Law of Entropy, basically.
Not that I believe in giving up. I don’t know that we are really on our way out, only that we seem to be heading that way. The opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings.
But your frequent recommendation of Buddhism never fails to put questions in my mind. I wish I knew what kind of Buddhism you’re selling! I thought I was better informed about Buddhism than most people, but the Buddhism I know is the primitive one, more Hinayana than even Mahayana, the Buddhism of the Fourfold Truth, the Eightfold Path–of ahimsa, of the desire to escape the cycle of birth and death….
That kind of Buddhism has ever figured in my mind as a symptom of decadence, not wholly unlike Christianity–and I would say it’s been with reason too, because what kind of pussification (I’m borrowing your “pussified”) is needed to WANT to avoid incarnation, to hate physical existence because it comes with pains, to regard Nirvana–essentially lack of existence, “no qualities”–as salvation?! Contrast that with the thunderous virility of the Viking, who, in fighting bloody battles, fondly hoped to go to Valhalla and fight every day, slaying and sometimes being slain, but anyhow going each evening to the banquet hall to gluttonize, get drunk and jump on a curvy blond Valkyrie. HE had a love of life–a lust for it. Pain? He loved existence despite its pains less than FOR them, and that’s because he had fortitude and for him they weren’t so painful.
And what value can ahimsa–the principle of “non-injury”–have for the task we must undertake? We’re going to have to fight at some point, and that means injuring.
Now, I’m aware that creeds can be turned inside out like a glove. G. Bernard Shaw rightly says “The conversion of savages to Christianity is the conversion of Christianity to savagery”; and I know that now there are homosexual Jews who consider themselves perfectly Jewish in religion despite LEVITICUS 18:22’s unequivocal condemnation of homosexuality, while in the past there were the Crusaders and Conquistadors, men who deemed themselves perfectly Christian notwithstanding their living by the sword, laying treasures upon the earth, serving Mammon and never turning the cheek.
You might clarify the issue here for every reader, if you explained how the Buddhism you proffer is not similarly the religion in name only and at variance with what most people know as the religion of Gautama.
Buddhism is not a religion. Religion must have a theology. I utterly do not care. I learned that from Buddhism. AFAIK Buddhism says contradictions do exist- not only in mind but also in existence.
Still don’t care.
” It MAY mean that, like everything else on this planet and the planet itself, we really ARE on our way out–courtesy of the Law of Entropy, basically.”
No . What it means is that very few people have ever articulated the FACT that thermodynamic and/or entropy laws of physics apply only to inanimate physical reality and they Do NOT Govern or apply to
[ living spiritual entities ]
such as biological organisms and especially humanity .
Clearly , if you assume evolution is true then the physics
[ law of entropy ] alone would have terminated the formation of biological organisms at the beginning .
” It MAY mean that, like everything else on this planet and the planet itself, we really ARE on our way out–courtesy of the Law of Entropy, basically.”
No . What it means is that very few people have ever articulated the FACT that thermodynamic and/or entropy laws of physics apply only to inanimate physical reality and they Do NOT Govern or apply to
[ living spiritual entities ]
such as biological organisms and especially humanity .
Clearly , if you assume evolution is true then the physics
[ law of entropy ] alone would have terminated the formation of any biological organisms at the beginning of it .
TJ, MONEYTALKS, POUPON MARX–
TJ: No, religions do NOT have to posit a deity, any more than they need be messianic or involve blood sacrifice. Only theological religions have to posit deities.
MONEYTALKS: Unsuperb observations. Every material thing–like an individual, race or species–has an inception, a development, an apogee, a decline and dissolution. Everything winds down, and nothing complex, at least, is forever. You know about figures of speech, doncha? Like “All men are created equal”?
Oh, and “living spiritual entities”? Like ghosts?
Now for the important matter. POUPON MARX: Do I detect a reluctance to commit yourself as to whether you’re recommending Buddhism or just something which, with too much license, is called “Buddhism”? You may be taking your time, I suppose, or are busy with other tasks; but I wouldn’t wonder about it if I hadn’t raised the question before without your replying.
I do believe that the religion founded by Gautama has been bastardized more than once. I know someone who used to chant before the Gohonzon Scroll, and she regarded that as Buddhism. Chanting was, it seems, lol the be-all and end-all! Also, I’ve spent considerable time in Southeast Asia, particularly in Thailand, where almost everyone is nominally a Buddhist but is meaningfully so no more than Clovis’ Franks or Alaric’s Visigoths were meaningfully Christian….
Not that I think much of even the Buddhism that that wimpy, decadent Kshatriya formulated! Y’know, the guy who was so pussified that his father didn’t want him to leave the castle, but then he did, and the poor lil wuss was so horrified at seeing instances of suffering that he determined to find a way out of life and help others out of it too, since it was so full of unpleasantness lol (yeah, full of things that healthy men in ascending cultures have taken with a grain of salt).
So just answer this: does the Buddhism you recommend to the White Nationalist include endeavoring to escape Samsara, the cycle of birth and death? Does it mean seeking to avoid incarnation and physical existence, because such existence is too filled with sorrow?
If it does, then you’re recommending just another life-hating, world-hating religion, hardly better than Christianity.
Not that I believe in Samsara any more than I do Valhalla. But what Buddhists have wished and what Vikings have wished have told us everything about their respective METTLE or lack thereof. The man who wants out of existence because it’s painful is a weak man. He can’t take it. The man who loves physical existence so much that he fondly hopes for a continuation of it past death, despite its conflicts and difficulties and pains–and even FOR these–is a strong man, a creature of courage and fortitude.
The Viking said YES even to the most violent kind of life, and to a long continuance of it even after death. The Buddhist has said NO to life. So why recommend to us the Buddhist’s creed?
P.S. I do believe that long ago Klassen and Hale answered the question as to what religion WNs might do well to have….
Keeping on the subject of religion and and pussification, I see that a professor of English has been fired at Catholic, Jesuit Fordham University, NYC, for the sin of Whiteness.
The case is so incredibly disgusting that my disgust isn’t mitigated by the fact that the professor is very “woke.” His trouble started when he mistook one black student for another, calling him by the other’s name. HE WAS SUSPENDED FOR THAT. But what got him terminated is his subsequent attempt to exonerate himself by saying that he was no racist, that in fact his career was “centered specifically and explicitly around issues of justice, equality, and inclusion.” For that he was convicted of having a “white savior complex,” and the female Polish-American (if her surname is any indication) Catholic dean banished him from that filthy institution of higher lying.
I can hear Rabbi Saul having a belly laugh as he savors his Manischewitz….
I don’t know about the rest of you, but one of the things I most feel in connection with our predicament is SHAME. Primitives low in numbers, intelligence, average wealth and resources of almost every kind are pushing around the demographic which could easily crush them if it willed, with that potentially super-potent demographic just taking it, retreating, trying to appease. You can now be fired for racism if you say that your whole life has been anti-racist. IT’S GOTTEN THAT BAD.
Unless our kind really IS on its way out, I can’t imagine that there aren’t explosive events and upheavals somewhere ahead….