Posted on 02/19/2019 4:41:26 PM PST by ebb tide
February 19, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – In what they say is “just the first of many,” lawyers for Covington Catholic High School junior Nick Sandmann filed a $250 million lawsuit against the Washington Post today.
“The Post rushed to lead the mainstream media to assassinate Nicholas’ character and bully him,” high-profile attorneys Lin Wood and Todd McMurty wrote in a summary of their lawsuit. The newspaper “[fanned] the flames of the social media mob into a mainstream media frenzy of false attacks and threats against Nicholas.”
Sandmann and his fellow Covington classmates became the target of false accusations of racism after a selectively edited video of them waiting for their bus after the 2019 March for Life was shared on social media. The video purported to show the boys harassing an elderly Native American veteran. But additional extended video and firsthand accounts soon revealed the man, Nathan Phillips, was the one who waded into the group waiting for its bus and decided to beat a drum inches from Sandmann’s face, and other adults who accompanied Phillips shouted racial taunts at the kids. The kids had been performing school cheers in an attempt to drown out the harassment, and did not respond to adults’ insults and abuse in kind.
No video showed the teens chanting “build the wall,” as was widely reported.
In addition to the video evidence that vindicated Sandmann and his peers, it then came to light that Phillips did not actually serve in Vietnam as he and multiple media outlets reported he did, has a violent criminal record, and attempted to lead protestors in disrupting Mass at the Basilica of National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception – where many pro-life events take place around the March for Life – just one day after he confronted Sandmann.
Sandmann’s lawyers call Phillips a “phony war hero” in their detailed timeline of events that led up to the activist’s accosting of the underage boys.
The lawsuit says the Washington Post engaged in “unlawful and bullying conduct at Nicholas.” The 115-pound 16-year-old, who was on his first-ever out-of-state field trip without his family, “suffered substantial reputational and emotional harm” as a result of the Post’s false reporting, his lawyers say. “The Post’s campaign to target Nicholas in furtherance of its political agenda was carried out by using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles which effectively provided a worldwide megaphone to Phillips and other anti-Trump individuals and entities to smear a young boy who was in its view an acceptable casualty in their war against the President.”
“Unlike the Post’s abuse of the profession of journalism, Plaintiffs do not bring this lawsuit to use the judicial system to further a political agenda,” the lawyers maintain. “This lawsuit is brought against the Post to seek legal redress for its negligent, reckless, and malicious attacks on Nicholas which caused permanent damage to his life and reputation...The Post bullied an innocent child with an absolute disregard for the pain and destruction its attacks would cause to his life.”
The incident caused Sandmann and other Covington students to be subject to death threats. Their school was forced to close for a day for safety reasons; when it reopened, it required a heavy police presence.
Wood and McMurty laid out their evidence that the Post, in a series of seven articles, published defamatory and false information about Sandmann, concluding, “As the natural and foreseeable consequence of its actions, the Post knew and intended that its False and Defamatory Accusations would be republished by others, including media outlets and others on social media.”
The attorneys say the newspaper published its pieces smearing Sandmann “negligently and with actual malice.”
“All members of the mainstream & social media mob of bullies who recklessly & viciously attacked Nick would be well-served to read” Sandmann’s legal complaint against the Post “carefully,” Wood tweeted today.
$250 million is pocket change to the WP’s owner.
hehehe couldn’t happen to a better rag except maybe NY times..
Seems like there is another posting on this topic.
Kids can sue?
I will wait until the third posting before I read the article.
Great news, not fake news.
Probably about 2% of Bezos’ wealth - after the divorce takes half. But, will send a message to the other rags, that can’t take that hit.
Stinking elitist bigots.
Hope he quickly becomes one of the top 1%. May he share it with those who were also named negatively in the news.
Nope. No one is worse than the WP. Not the NYT’s and not even CNN.
Here is another story about it.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/43694/breaking-nick-sandmanns-lawyers-file-massive-ryan-saavedra
They might reach a settlement but it will be nowhere near 250 million.
I'm pulling for the full amount. Make them think twice before using Twitter as a valid news source.
IIRC Bezos paid $250 mil. for the WaPo when he bought it.
$250 million is the cost of the whole company. And there is no way that WaPo did $250 million in damages to Mr. Sandmann. This is just an abuse of the system and , frankly, hurts his case in the court of public opinion. The defendant acted badly and deserves to pay out damages, but it shouldn’t be a lottery ticket for the plaintiff.
No reason Bozos doesn’t have $250M laying around. After all, he doesn’t pay income taxes.
We can be assured that Bezos is going to be royally p!ssed.
With this and his being chased out of NYC by its Liberals, one can bet that Bezos is having a good long chat with himself about just how good liberalism is for business.
Regardless of the damages paid (if any, Sullivan ruling, anyone?) The standard of having a confidentiality agreement to keep the proceedings out of the public eye should be done away with, permanently.
It won’t happen, lawyers will never allow themselves to be held to some sort of ethical standard.
The 250 mil is just a standard technique to settle for a much lower amount, to be protected from the public eye by a confidentiality agreement.
How did the law and the practice of it get so royally screwed up?
Excellent strategery
Bezos will settle.
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