Marine dad wins funeral protesters lawsuit

[unhappycamper]

Westboro Baptist church member Gabriel Phelps-Roper, 10, and his sister Grace Phelps-Roper, 13, protest at the funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder in Westminster, Md. in this March 10, 2006, file photo.




Albert Snyder lost his son Matthew in Iraq.


Marine dad wins funeral protesters lawsuit
By Alex Dominguez - The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Nov 1, 2007 6:37:18 EDT

BALTIMORE — The father of a fallen Marine was awarded nearly $11 million Wednesday in damages by a jury that found leaders of a fundamentalist church had invaded the family’s privacy and inflicted emotional distress when they picketed the Marine’s funeral.

The jury awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages and $8 million in punitive damages, $6 million for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress to the Marine’s father, Albert Snyder of York, Pa.

Snyder sued the Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified monetary damages after members staged a demonstration at the March 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.

The defense said it planned to appeal and one of the church’s leaders, Shirley Phelps-Roper, said the members would continue their pickets of military funerals.

“Absolutely, don’t you understand this was an act in futility,” Phelps-Roper said.

Church members routinely picket funerals of military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, carrying signs such as “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “God hates fags.”


Rest of article at: http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2007/10/ap_marinefuneral_071031/

[BridgeTheGap]

1. Good! I hope this stands. It will slow these assholes down if not

stop them in their tracks.
And to think that they believe they are doing something good...how fucking deluded!

[atreides1]

3. Not any more delusional then others

I doubt that this will even slow them down, and it might very well get thrown out on appeal. In reality a politician could use the "invasion of privacy" precedent of this particular case to file a lawsuit against protesters, like Code Pink, IVAW, and other organizations.

It's kind of a slippery slope we've come upon here!

[BridgeTheGap]

4. you have a point there - can common decency be legislated?

though this was a civil case, there is a large difference. Code Pink, et al. are not picketing funerals of fallen soldiers.
I suppose this case could have been the jury making a statement. If that's the case, it probably will be thrown out. Something nasty is probably going to happen to the Phelps crew if they keep this shit up.

[zbdent]

2. These are the phreaks who give anti-war protesting a bad name

(and the media tends to gloss over that these are extremists of the RIGHT-WING persuasion ...)