Dad Ordered To Pay Legal Costs

[greenberetTFS]

Originally Posted by Stras

I'm surprised that the church wasn't firebombed again or repeatedly..

Yeah, someone burned it down a couple of years ago...

I'm sure that WBC would turn any protest against their church into an Anti-Religion theme and then sue for hindering the right to practice religion..

Much in the same way they have politicalized their rights over the rights of others.

As far as I'm concerned, they fall into a certain oath that I've sworn in the past.

"Against all enemies foreign and domestic"

Stras is right on target,that oath is what we've taken and we should follow it!!!!!.......

Big Teddy

[Stras]

I did submit a request to God that he use the WBC to fill the Muslim request for the 100 virgins in heaven.

I'm not in a rush to get up there and see if my request was approved or not.

[Hammock]

Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 39 deals with the assessment of costs (which do NOT include attorney's fees) involved making an appeal. See generally here:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frap/rules.html

Under Rule 39, subsection (a)(3), "if a judgment is reversed, costs are taxed against the appellee." Every competent lawyer knows this and advises his client accordingly when an appeal is filed. It should not come as a surprise to any party at this stage that costs are taxable.

Under subsection (d), a party who wants costs taxed must—within 14 days after entry of judgment—file with the circuit clerk, with proof of service, an itemized and verified bill of costs. The other side has 10 days after service of the bill of costs to file objections.

The order on appeal was filed on Sept. 24, 2009. On October 6, Phelps filed an itemized bill of costs (costs.pdf below). The main component of the costs was copying fees for the appendix which accompanied a brief on appeal. As required by the Rules, the court's clerk ordered Snyder to pay them on October 16 (order costs. pdf below) because Snyder did not file objections on time. On October 23, Snyder (untimely) filed objections. On October 27, the Court directed Phelps to file a reply to Snyder's objections (see reply.pdf below)

Snyder advanced three grounds for objecting to the costs: first, that he had no money to pay them; second, that the duplication costs ($.50/page) were too high; and third, that the costs included duplicating extraneous and irrelevant material (see brief, pdf, objection.pdf, and declaration.pdf below). In my opinion, the third grounds (irrelevant material) in theory provided the best basis to reduce the costs, but Snyder failed to fully explain to the court which material was irrelevant and which was not. When making such an argument, it is incumbent upon the objector to specify what should have rightly been included in the appendix, and what irrelevant. But Snyder didn't do that. He left it for the court (or the clerk) to figure it out. Neither the court nor the clerk have any obligation to pore over the record to figure out what Snyder didn't bother to do. Phelps pointed all of this out in the Reply, and also fairly met the substance of the other objections.

In sum, the untimeliness of the filing combined with its sloppiness (there is at least one wrong citation, by the way) probably doomed the objections.

One last point. It took over five months for the Court to rule on the objections. That's five free months that Snyder received. Also, the Court denied the objections without referencing the delay in filing. Given that the delay is potentially malpractice, it also threw Snyder's lawyer a bone, in my opinion.

I was in a the gym yesterday when this came up on ABC Evening News. The manager suddenly turned ALL 6 TVs to this piece, turned the obnoxious hiphop music down and the sound up for everyone to hear. When I left there was a jar with a note on the front to donate to help this guy. It was full of dollar bills, I added my own.

I understand this church as nasty as it might be, has a 1st amendment right to freedom of speech..but morally, this is wrong. How can they call themselves Christian and do things like this? This is a classic examply of how people can turn and twist religion into something vile and nasty for thier own political adgenda.

AM

[FMF DOC]

Originally Posted by Stras

I'm surprised that the church wasn't firebombed again or repeatedly..

Yeah, someone burned it down a couple of years ago...

I'm sure that WBC would turn any protest against their church into an Anti-Religion theme and then sue for hindering the right to practice religion..

Much in the same way they have politicalized their rights over the rights of others.

As far as I'm concerned, they fall into a certain oath that I've sworn in the past.

"Against all enemies foreign and domestic"

Excellant point.... wish this place was a little closer to home...

[Gypsy]

Originally Posted by armymom1228

I understand this church as nasty as it might be, has a 1st amendment right to freedom of speech.
AM

Just as we have the freedom and 1st amendment right to drown them the hell out.

I hope your gym manager is truly sending the money to the family.

[greenberetTFS]

Fox news last night said O'reilly is going to pick up the entire cost that the father is facing...........

Big Teddy

[Masochist]

Originally Posted by armymom1228

How can they call themselves Christian and do things like this? This is a classic examply of how people can turn and twist religion into something vile and nasty for thier own political adgenda.

AM

Anything to an extreme can be dangerous - even lethal. Even something as "harmless" as water, the thing we all need for life, can cause death if consumed too much. Religion has the same effect.

[Utah Bob]

Originally Posted by NORMAL550GIRL

I guess I have to take back all the bad stuff I've said about O'Reilly.

Well, perhaps not all of it.

[echoes]

Originally Posted by Utah Bob

Well, perhaps not all of it.

I spoke to a VN Vet today, and told him I had read the westboro chruch had been burned down a couple years ago, and he said he was surprised it was not burning as we speak!!!

Oxagen theives!!!!!!!

Holly

[craigepo]

Originally Posted by NORMAL550GIRL

Craigpo, I wonder what you think their chances are to having the appeals court overturned?

Predicting an outcome on an appellate case is like reading tea leaves. There could well be $1,000,000 spent on appellate briefs in this case.

When the US Supreme Court accepts a case, you can rest assured that there are some serious issues in the case that need to be resolved. Off hand, I can't think of any cases with similar facts upon which the supreme court might base a decision.

It seems like the trial judge did everything correctly that he could. He had a jury decide the important fact issues, including determining the amount of damages. That a jury awarded the Plaintiff a mult-million dollar verdict is not a trivial issue.

[Hammock]

The questions presented are attached below. The case is scheduled for oral arguments in October 2010. You'll be able to find the merits briefs here, when they are filed:

http://www.abanet.org/publiced/preview/briefs/home.html

Here is how one constitutional analyst framed the case:

"The funeral picketing case (Snyder v. Phelps, et al., 09-751) focuses on a significant question of First Amendment law: the degree of constitutional protection given to remarks that a private person made about another private person, occurring outside the site of a private event. The family of the dead soldier had won a verdict before a jury, but that was overturned by the Fourth Circuit Court, finding that the signs displayed at the funeral in western Maryland and later comments on an anti-gay website were protected speech. The petition for review seeks the Court’s protection for families attending a funeral from “unwanted” remarks or displays by protesters.

In March four years ago, Marine Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder was killed while serving in Iraq. His family arranged for a private funeral, with Christian burial, at St. John’s Catholic Church in Westminster, Md. When word of the planned funeral appeared in the newspapers, the Rev. Fred W. Phelps, Sr., pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., who has gained notoriety in recent years by staging protests at military funerals, decided to stage a demonstration at the Maryland funeral. In response to such protests, some 40 states have passed laws to regulate funeral demonstrations.

The Rev. Phelps’ church preaches a strongly anti-gay message, contending that God hates America because it tolerates homosexuality, particularly in the military services. The church also spreads its views through an online site, www.godhatesfags.com. When the Snyder funeral occurred, the Rev. Phelps, two of his daughters and four grandchildren staged a protest nearby. They carried signs with such messages as “God Hates the USA,” “America is doomed,” “Pope in hell,” “Semper fi fags,” and “Thank God for dead soldiers.” The demonstration violated no local laws, and was kept at police orders a distance from the church. After the funeral, the Rev. Phelps continued his protest over the Snyder funeral on his church’s website, accusing the Snyder family of having taught their son irreligious beliefs.

The soldier’s father, Albert Snyder, sued the Rev. Phelps, his daughters and the Westboro Church under Maryland state law, and won a $5 million verdict based on three claims: intrusion into a secluded event, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and civil conspiracy. (The verdict included $2.9 million for compensatory damages and $2.1 million for punitive damages; the punitive award had been reduced from $8 million by the trial judge.) The Fourth Circuit Court overturned the verdict, concluding that the protesters’ speech was protected by the First Amendment because it was only a form of hyperbole, not an assertion of actual facts about the soldier or his family. While finding that the Phelps’ remarks were “utterly distasteful,” the Circuit Court said they involved matters of public concern, including the issue of homosexuality in the military and the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens.

In Albert Snyder’s appeal, his lawyers argued that the Supreme Court’s protection of speech about public issues, especially the Justices’ 1988 decision in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, does not apply “to private individuals versus private individuals.” If it does apply, the petition said, “the victimized private individual is left without recourse.” The Circuit Court decision, it added, encourages private individuals to use hyperbolic language to gain constitutional protection “even if that language is targeted at another private individual at a private, religious funeral.”

Even if the Hustler decision does apply to the kind of remarks at issue, the petition asserted, the case also raises the issue of whether those who attend a funeral are like a “captive audience” and thus need protection against intruders who were not invited."

http://www.scotusblog.com/2010/03/co...neral-pickets/

[Stras]

Originally Posted by NORMAL550GIRL

Good points. Are those briefs available online -- does anyone know? I might actually give myself some homework-- maybe feel like a "real" lawyer again.

Not sure if those are online.

There are a couple of links here to the state policies in regards to the Rights of the Mourning Families.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/...neral_protests

and the act signed by President Bush which applies to the National Cemeteries.

Attached is the NC Statute for Disorderly conduct (para a 8).

[rdret1]

Originally Posted by glebo

That is a croc 'o kaka...but if I'm not mistakin' Conan O'Brian is pickin' up the tab...

It is Bill O'Reilly from Fox News that is paying the $16,500.

Disregard, missed where this had already been posted.

[FMF DOC]

Not really anything we haven't already heard....

YORK, Pa. – Some nights Albert Snyder wakes up at 3 a.m. Other nights he doesn't sleep at all, tormented by thoughts of the hateful signs carried by a fundamentalist church outside his Marine son's funeral.
"Thank God for Dead Soldiers."
"You're Going to Hell."
"Semper Fi Fags."
Hundreds of grieving families have been targeted by the Westboro Baptist Church, which believes military deaths are the work of a wrathful God who punishes the United States for tolerating homosexuality.
Most mourners try to ignore the taunts. But Snyder couldn't let it go. He became the first to sue the church to halt the demonstrations, and he's pursued the group farther than anyone else.

Now, more than four years after his son died in a Humvee accident in Iraq, Snyder's legal battle is headed to the Supreme Court. And his tireless efforts have drawn support from across the country, including a wave of donations after he was ordered to pay the church's court costs — a $16,500 judgment that the congregation plans to use for more protests.
Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, 20, was not gay. But for the Westboro church, any dead soldier is fair game. Pastor Fred Phelps oversees a congregation of 70 to 80 members — mostly his children and grandchildren. They consider themselves prophets, and they insist the nation is doomed.
As Snyder sees it, Westboro isn't engaging in constitutionally protected speech when it pickets funerals. He argues that Phelps and his followers are disrupting private assemblies and harassing people at their most vulnerable — behavior that's an incitement to violence.
"This is more than free speech. This is like yelling, 'Fire!' in a crowded theater. Somebody's going to get hurt," Snyder said, his voice rising and eyes welling with tears.
Snyder's lawsuit accuses the Topeka, Kan., church of invading his privacy and intentionally inflicting emotional distress. He has the backing of his ex-wife and his two daughters, but Snyder insisted on being the only plaintiff.
Except for the 40 hours per week he works selling industrial equipment, the case takes up nearly all his time. He says it's more stressful than a second full-time job.
Snyder, who lives in York, about 85 miles west of Philadelphia, is soft-spoken and polite. But anger and sadness flare up quickly, with little warning. The litigation has forced him to relive the anguish of his son's death, and his grief is still raw.
"It's still very emotional," Snyder said in an interview at his attorney's office. "It's like I constantly relive this every day, and I just wonder sometimes, when this is all over, what I'm going to do with that void. Will the grieving process begin?"
The fight has taken its toll on Snyder's health. The broad-chested 54-year-old has struggled with clinical depression and diabetes.
Snyder fought back against the church in part because he felt Westboro paid special attention to his son. Several weeks after the funeral, the pastor's daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, wrote in an online diatribe that Snyder and his ex-wife taught their son "to defy his creator."
Westboro also protests nonmilitary events, such as the 2007 funeral of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and the deaths of 29 miners last week in West Virginia. The group first grabbed widespread notice in 1998, when members appeared outside the funeral of Matthew Shepard, the gay University of Wyoming student whose murder drew national attention.
Lawyers Sean E. Summers and Craig T. Trebilcock, both military veterans, agreed to take Snyder's case pro bono. They warned him about the emotional toll of a long legal dispute.
Snyder won the first round decisively, when a jury in federal court in Baltimore awarded him $10.9 million in damages in October 2007. A judge later reduced the award to $5 million.
Last September, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the verdict, ruling Westboro's protest was constitutionally protected speech.
The Supreme Court agreed last month to consider whether the protesters' actions, no matter how provocative and upsetting, are protected by the First Amendment. The case will be argued in the fall.
Then something unexpected happened: The appeals court ordered Snyder to pay Westboro $16,510 in court costs. While it's not unusual for the losing party in a civil case to be required to pay some costs, it rarely happens when an individual sues a private entity, especially when the case is still active, experts say.
Margie Jean Phelps, one of Fred Phelps' daughters and an attorney, will argue the case before the Supreme Court. She has said the church plans to use the money from Snyder to stage more protests. That's what's so upsetting to Snyder, who says he would drop the matter if the church stopped picketing funerals.
Snyder has received plenty of publicity since filing the lawsuit, but interest intensified after the court-ordered payment.
Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly pledged to pay the entire $16,510, and the American Legion has raised more than $20,000. Every day, hundreds of envelopes arrive at Summers' office. Snyder plans to use the money for other court fees and to donate what's left over to veterans.
Not everyone is on Snyder's side, even if they find Westboro's protests loathsome.
They point to the undisputed facts of the case. Westboro contacted police before its protest, which was conducted in a designated area on public land — 1,000 feet from the church where the Mass was held in Westminster, Md.
The protesters — Phelps and six family members — broke no laws. Snyder knew they were present, but he did not see their signs or hear their statements until he turned on the news at his son's wake.
Jonathan M. Turley, a George Washington University law professor, asked his constitutional law class to grapple with the case. At first, the entire class was sympathetic to Snyder. But after they dug deeper, they concluded that Westboro's speech was protected by the First Amendment.
"Once you get down to trying to draw the line between privacy and free speech, it becomes clear that a ruling against Westboro could create the danger of a slippery slope for future courts," Turley said.
Turley, who studies the Supreme Court closely, said it's difficult to predict how the justices will rule.
Phelps-Roper has no doubt the court will favor Westboro. "If that case can prevail, there is no First Amendment left," she said.
Some military families see no reason why such protests cannot be restricted.
"I don't think these people should be allowed to come in and disrupt a family's grief," said Diane Salyers of Sims, Ark., whose son's funeral was picketed by Westboro in 2007. Snyder "speaks for all of us who've been affected by these people."