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- LAW, Page 60Making War on WAR
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- An Alabama civil rights advocate invokes liability doctrine in
- a bid to drive a California race-hatred monger out of business
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- By JAMES WILLWERTH/PORTLAND
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- Angry knots of buzz-cut skinheads and helmeted police
- circled each other warily in the halls of Oregon's Multnomah
- County courthouse last week. Close by, in a marble-pillared
- courtroom hidden behind security gates, two men stood before
- a civil court judge and began a legal duel that involved an
- unusual amalgam of crimes and punishments: charges of murder
- and racism, to be measured by the strictures of tort liability.
- "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," intoned civil rights
- crusader Morris Dees, "we're going to ask you to return a
- verdict so big that it will put Tom Metzger out of business."
-
- In taking aim at Metzger, 52, and his son John, 22, Dees is
- trying to cripple an admitted "racial separatist" and leader
- of a neo-Nazi movement known as the White Aryan Resistance
- (WAR). Dees, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center in
- Montgomery, was using an unusual weapon: the common-law
- principle of "vicarious liability," most frequently invoked
- against employers for their workers' negligence. Simply put,
- Dees and his fellow lawyers sue national racist organizations
- on behalf of the families of victims of violent acts, charging
- that the organizations should incur heavy civil penalties for
- their indirect role in the violence. In 1987 Dees bankrupted
- the Alabama-based United Klans of America with a $7 million
- judgment for the family of Michael Donald, 19, who was shot and
- hanged by U.K.A. thugs in 1981 in Mobile.
-
- In Portland, Dees and colleague Elden Rosenthal are asking
- a $10 million punitive judgment against WAR and the Metzgers.
- A member of WAR's Portland affiliate, East Side White Pride,
- was convicted last year of murder in the 1988 beating death of
- Mulugeta Seraw, a 27-year-old Ethiopian man; two other members
- were convicted of first-degree manslaughter in the case.
- Metzger, a television repairman, and his son run WAR from their
- family's home in Fallbrook, Calif., north of San Diego. The
- organization's cable-television show, Race and Reason, is
- carried on 50 cable-access channels, and WAR operates 23
- telephone hot lines. Its newspaper, WAR, runs articles and
- cartoons ridiculing Jews and nonwhites and often urges violence
- against them in the name of self-defense.
-
- The link between the Metzgers and the Portland murder, Dees
- alleges, was WAR national vice president David Mazzella, 20.
- The senior Metzger sent Mazzella to Portland in September 1988,
- the civil rights advocate charges, to organize East Side White
- Pride into a more militant street-fighting group. Dees'
- evidence includes a letter from John Metzger to Portland
- members that says Mazzella is coming "to show you how we
- operate." Dees charges that Mazzella promptly led the local
- racists out to beat up black and Hispanic victims.
-
- Seraw, who worked as an Avis airport shuttle-bus driver,
- lived near an apartment where the White Pride group were
- drinking one night, and was attacked with two friends while
- returning from a party. A skinhead named Kenneth Mieske came
- up behind Seraw with a baseball bat and struck his head "as
- hard as you'd hit a center field ball," Dees told the jury last
- week. Then Mieske stood over the fallen Seraw and hit him
- repeatedly, splitting open his skull.
-
- Dees is trying to prove any of a variety of related kinds
- of liability: that WAR and the Metzgers "through their agents"
- encouraged the killing; that the Metzgers and the Oregon
- skinheads formed a "civil conspiracy" leading to murder; that
- Seraw's death was caused by the Metzgers' "reckless" and
- "negligent" selection of a violence-prone agent to organize the
- Portland group. "This is a plain old wrongful-death suit in a
- state court," explained co-counsel Rosenthal. "It is a
- common-law course of action that doesn't bother with fancy
- federal or state civil rights laws."
-
- The Oregon chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union,
- for one, is concerned about aspects of the case. In an amicus
- curiae brief, the chapter urged that charges involving
- "negligent" and "reckless" speech be dropped, reasoning that
- a finding for the plaintiff on those grounds could have a
- chilling effect on First Amendment freedoms. A.C.L.U. lawyer
- Michael H. Simon adds, however, that adequate proof that Tom
- Metzger intended to cause serious harm by sending agents to
- Oregon would void his concern.
-
- Acting as his own lawyer, WAR leader Metzger is casting
- himself as a beleaguered populist, but not an instigator of
- violence. "I'm a white racial separatist," Tom Metzger says,
- "and I can sit down with any person, white, black or Oriental,
- and talk about it." Metzger's easygoing cracker-barrel manner
- in Portland is belied by the angry messages he tapes for WAR
- telephone lines. There he calls nonwhites "mud people" and
- "assorted scum"; attorney Dees is "Morris the pervert"; trial
- judge Ancer L. Haggerty, who is black, is an "Uncle Tom"; and
- the trial, says Metzger, is a "legal lynching."
-
- Dees will attempt to introduce in evidence other Metzger
- tapes, including one in which the senior Metzger observes that
- those who killed Seraw performed a "civic duty." If Dees
- convinces the jury there is a vicarious liability connection
- and wins a heavy award, Metzger will probably lose his family's
- home and the WAR offices. Future earnings could also be
- attached, as they were in the Klan case. The Klan, says Dees,
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