Judge Slashes Damages Due in Charlottesville Rally Case

Federal Judge Norman K. Moon dropped millions of dollars in damages last week due to the plaintiffs in a lawsuit stemming from the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, The Washington Post reported.

Moon, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia, reduced the $26 million judgment awarded by a jury in November 2021, in order to comply with a 1988 Virginia law that caps civil damages at $350,000. Additionally, Moon affirmed the more than $2 million in compensatory damages that the jury awarded, bringing the amount due to the plaintiffs to $2.35 million.

The lawsuit, Sines v. Kessler, was brought by Integrity First for America in 2019 on behalf of nine individuals who alleged physical harm and emotional distress during the rally.

Former alt-right leader Richard Spencer, rally organizer Jason Kessler and Christopher Cantwell, who became known as the "crying Nazi" due to a video he posted upon learning there was a warrant out for his arrest, are among 12 defendants who were found last year to have conspired to harass or commit acts of violence that week.

Also among the defendants was James Alex Fields Jr., who intentionally rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters on August 12, 2017, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and striking four of the plaintiffs listed.

Karen Dunn and Roberta Kaplan, who served as co-lead counsel for the Charlottesville plaintiffs, told The Associated Press that they were considering an appeal on the reduced damages. The pair previously argued in court that the cap should apply only per plaintiff.

"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," the attorneys stated.

"Such behavior, which has only increased in intensity since then, presents a clear and present danger to the health of our democracy," they added.

Meanwhile, James Kolenich, the attorney for defendant Nathan Damigo and Identity Evropa, said he was not surprised by the ruling, as he expected the punitive damages to be lowered.