God-smack
November 2nd, 2007Fred Phelps’ church has been defeated in Court: they owe a man 11 million dollars for emotional damages caused by their protest of his dead son’s military funeral.
I have two thoughts: the first — “Eleven million dollars is a lot of money and I don’t think I could award someone such a sum for emotional damages unless there were some damage to their reputation, which I don’t think is the case here”; the second is around the block:
It’s unclear whether Snyder will be able to collect the damages.
The assets of the church and the defendants are less than a million dollars, mainly in homes, cars and retirement accounts, defense attorney Jonathan Katz said. The church has about 75 members and is funded by tithing.
Craig Trebilcock, one of Snyder’s lawyers, had asked jurors to question the truthfulness of the defendants’ financial documents, one of which show Phelps-Davis having only $306 in the bank. He noted that Phelps-Davis is a practicing attorney, who could afford to travel to spread the church’s message.
“Rebekah Phelps-Davis has $306? She must be using Priceline.com. It doesn’t make any sense,” Trebilcock said.
Phelps’ church better be careful. They might get busted for tax fraud and money laundering, if they keep pissing off the wrong people. (Not that I know what kind of money they have or don’t or hide, but I’d guess it’s a lot. “Slush funds” aren’t all that uncommon, and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that something illegal’s going on. Trebilcock seems to concur.)