Maryland Jury Awards $11 Million to Veteran's Family

A jury in Baltimore, Maryland awarded a grieving father won a nearly $11 million in a verdict against a fundamentalist church that pickets military funerals out of a belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality. The federal jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress.

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." The plaintiff family claimed the protests intruded upon what should have been a private ceremony and sullied the memory of the event. The church members say that they are following their religious beliefs by spreading the message that soldiers are dying because America is too tolerant of homosexuality.

There are two pretty important questions here. The obvious is whether the 1st Amendment allows abhorrent messages to be published at what are essentially private events. The Defendants in this case plan to appeal, and have said, "Oh, it will take about five minutes to get that thing reversed."

The less obvious question is about punitive damages. Can an award stand if it is so far beyond the Defendant's ability to pay that it can, literally, never be collected? The Federal Judge noted that the size of the compensatory award "far exceeds the net worth of the defendants." The compensatory award is only about a third of the total award by the jury. If you think that this is a purely intellectual question, keep your eyes on the Texas Supreme Court. A case posing this question is on its way there.