A federal judge has slashed millions of dollars from the damages a jury ordered white nationalist leaders and organizations to pay for their role in the violence that erupted during the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in 2017
U.S. District Judge Norman Moon ordered the $24 million in punitive damages reduced to $350,000, the cap imposed under a Virginia law. Moon upheld the $2 million in compensatory damagesThe reduction in damages was expected because of the 1988 state law, which says that juries should not be told about the cap, but if a jury awards more than $350,000 in punitive damages, the judge must reduce the award.
During a march on the University of Virginia campus on Aug. 11, white nationalists chanted “Jews will not replace us,” surrounded counter-protesters and threw tiki torches at them. The following day, James Alex Fields Jr., an avowed Hitler admirer, intentionally drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring many others.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that Virginia's punitive-damages cap does not apply in a case involving a conspiracy to commit racial violence. They also argued that even if the cap does apply, it applies only on a “per-plaintiff basis,” meaning that each of the eight plaintiffs who sought punitive damages should receive $350,000.
“Judge Moon’s lengthy opinion reviewing the mountain of evidence we introduced at trial and affirming the jury verdicts on the culpability of each and every defendant confirms what really happened -- motivated by the tenets of white supremacy, defendants engaged in a wide-ranging conspiracy to commit violence in Charlottesville in August 2017," Kaplan and Dunn said in a statement.
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