Tag: Ralph Main

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Monument motions: Another stall for the statues

Frank Earnest, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, is the heritage defense coordinator of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Photo by Eze Amos

It was the same old, same old in Charlottesville Circuit Court on March 13, when attorneys involved in a lawsuit to keep the town’s Confederate monuments in place hashed out all-too-familiar arguments.

It’s been two years since the Monument Fund and a dozen other plaintiffs filed suit in response to City Council’s vote to remove one of the town’s most controversial memorials, the General Robert E. Lee statue, and attorneys appeared frustrated by the lack of progress. This hearing followed an unsuccessful settlement conference between the parties in February.

A trial is scheduled for September 9.

“Still, to this day, we don’t know which damages they’re pursuing,” said defense attorney Parker Rider-Longmaid. He practices with Jones Day, the largest law firm in the country, which is representing councilors Wes Bellamy, Mike Signer, Kathy Galvin, and former councilor Kristin Szakos in the suit pro bono. Former councilor Bob Fenwick and the city are also defendants and are being represented by city attorney Lisa Robertson.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys Ralph Main and Braxton Puryear have continued to request money for damages, though the monuments depicting generals Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson have faced no physical damage, even while temporarily shrouded after the Unite the Right rally that left three people dead.

Judge Rick Moore said perhaps the money, if awarded for damages, could be used for preservation, which he called, “the only hook the plaintiffs have, in my opinion.”

It’s unclear how much the plaintiffs are asking for.

Puryear suggested damages could be awarded for attorneys’ fees or the $3,000 in taxpayer money that councilors used for the black tarps that covered the statues. But, said Rider-Longmaid, “We don’t think the plaintiff[s] should have another opportunity to cook something up” about how to collect damages. The judge did not make a ruling, but questioned whether a case could be made for the cost of covering the war generals.

Moore, who has previously ruled councilors are individually liable for their vote to remove the statues, also didn’t rule on whether they showed gross negligence when they did so. Defense attorney Esha Mankodi, also with Jones Day, said their opponents would need to prove the councilors exercised “scant care” to win that argument.

That wasn’t the case, she added, because the city officials deliberated for 10 months before taking their original vote, held approximately 20 public meetings, and sought a legal opinion from the city attorney.

But Main said that was something for a jury to decide, and the judge took it under advisement, though he hasn’t yet ruled on whether it will be a jury or a bench trial.

Plaintiff Frank Earnest, who holds the title of heritage defense coordinator within the Sons of Confederate Veterans, sat in the front row of the courtroom.

The 63-year-old Virginia Beach resident told C-VILLE last month that his organization has denounced racist groups over its 100-year history.

“We have nothing to do with those people,” he said. “We don’t want to see monuments to defending our state removed.”

Frank Earnest (center) and local attorney Jock Yellott (right) are plaintiffs in the suit to keep the city’s Confederate monuments in place. Photo by Eze Amos
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But their emails! Councilors must turn over docs in monument suit

Braxton Puryear is one attorney representing plaintiffs in the case. Staff photo

 

In a lawsuit aimed at keeping the statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in Charlottesville, city councilors have been ordered to turn over documents related to conversations of removing them—a decision the council made, initially just to remove Lee, in a 3-2 vote in February 2017.

Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Rick Moore ordered June 19 that current councilors Wes Bellamy, Mike Signer and Kathy Galvin, and former councilors Bob Fenwick and Kristin Szakos, who were serving at the time of the vote, would have to supply documents dating back to September 2016.

Plaintiffs are asking for paper trails, including emails, text messages, phone calls, memos and videos from official city accounts and councilors’ private servers, and have specifically asked for those between the city leaders and members of activist groups such as Black Lives Matter and Showing Up For Racial Justice, according to acting city attorney Lisa Robertson.

“The plaintiffs are showing their hand,” she said. “It comes close to a witch hunt, your honor, and I don’t know any other word for it.”

Plaintiffs include 11 individuals, such as attorney Fred Payne, a city resident who “enjoys both Lee Park and Jackson Park and the monuments erected therein on a regular basis,” according to the lawsuit, and two groups: the Monument Fund and the Virginia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The suit was filed in March 2017, before the spaces were renamed as Emancipation and Justice parks, respectively.

Robertson argued that the plaintiffs didn’t succinctly define the type of documents they’re seeking, and that the range of dates from which they want to collect evidence was too wide. (While the judge ruled that councilors would need to sort through materials dating back to September 2016, plaintiffs had originally asked for that through January 2016.)

Plaintiffs attorney Ralph Main didn’t deny that the scope of evidence was large.

“We wanted to find out if there was something going on ahead of time,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a fishing expedition.”

Robertson called the plaintiffs’ request “painful” and asked the judge if he had any idea of the sheer volume of emails councilors received from people all over the nation in the wake of their decision to remove Lee and Jackson. And Moore said, yes, because of the national movement to contact city clerk Llezelle Dugger, and tell her how he should rule. Through her, Moore said he received “thousands” of messages.

He then ruled that councilors would not need to turn over messages they received, and only the ones they sent.

Last week, he ruled that councilors are not immune to legal fees or paying for damages related to their vote to remove the Confederate statues, and Robertson said it could be two more weeks before the city’s insurance company is able to determine who’s covered.

Individual councilors may have separate attorneys, and should not be compelled to turn over evidence until that’s sorted out, argued Robertson. But Main said deadlines are quickly approaching, and they’ve been parties in the suit since it was filed.

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Statute retroactive? Judge mulls city’s motion to throw out statue lawsuit

The battle over where the statues of generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson will reside continued in court September 1. File photos

The battle over Charlottesville City Council’s vote to remove the statue of General Robert E. Lee continued in a packed courtroom September 1, with the lines pretty clearly drawn between statue supporters and those who want Lee to make a final retreat.

The hearing was to argue the city’s demurrer, which alleges that even if all the facts are correct in the lawsuit filed by the Monument Fund, the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other plaintiffs, the 1997 Virginia law that prohibits municipalities from removing war memorials is not retroactive, and would not apply to the Lee statue that Paul McIntire gave the city in 1924.

Plaintiffs attorney Ralph Main maintained that a common sense reading of the law was in order.

At the end of the hearing that stretched four hours, Judge Rick Moore decided to take a few more weeks before ruling, although he did sustain the city’s right to rename Lee Park to Emancipation Park.

The issue has roiled Charlottesville since Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy called for the statue’s removal in March 2016. City Council voted to remove the statue of Lee in February, while keeping the monument of General Stonewall Jackson. It also renamed the eponymous parks Emancipation and Justice in June.

Since then, Charlottesville has become a magnet for white supremacists, drawing tiki-torch-carrying marchers in May, the KKK in July and the deadly Unite the Right rally August 12. The latter has spurred cities in other states to remove their own Confederate monuments, but such action in Virginia has been stymied by state law.

In Charlottesville Circuit Court, the Lee supporters were older, whiter, more tie- and seersucker-wearing, with more Colonel Sanders’ beards. And at least one of those there, who has been alleged to be a Sons of Confederate Veterans member, was an attendee at the August 12 Unite the Right Rally, where he wore an emblem of the secessionist-favoring hate group League of the South and was photographed with longtime white supremacist David Duke.

Statue opponents were younger, more racially diverse and more likely to be wearing a Black Lives Matter T-shirt. Many of them gathered outside the courthouse with signs before the hearing began, and many of them attended the chaotic August 21 City Council meeting, a fact of which Judge Moore was aware.

“We’re not going to allow that,” he said at the beginning of the hearing. “If you’re not able to control yourself, you should leave.”

Moore also noted that the clerk’s office had been inundated with thousands of calls, letters and emails, “overwhelmingly from out of state,” and he asked the senders to knock it off. “Our courts are not a majoritarian institution,” he said. “Judges do not wait to see what public opinion is. It’s improper for a person to contact a court to influence a case.”

Deputy City Attorney Lisa Robertson hammered at the fact that when the General Assembly passed the monument law in 1997, it also passed a statute that requires specific language stating if a new law applies limits to a city’s previously held authority. “The words the General Assembly had to use for retroaction are not present in this legislation,” she said.

She also questioned the standing of the plaintiffs, maintaining that being a taxpayer is not enough, because it would “give standing to challenge any decision of city government.”

On that issue, in a 2009 case in the same Charlottesville Circuit Court, Judge Jay Swett said a group of citizens trying to block the building of the Meadow Creek Parkway through McIntire Park did have standing, although he ultimately denied their injunction to stop the already underway construction of the road.

Main argued the legislators intended for the monument law to be retroactive, because the statute listed wars going back to before the nation’s founding, and he asked, “How many people are erecting monuments these days for the Algonquin War?”

Judge Moore pointed out the law doesn’t say “has been erected,” and that while he wanted to apply a common sense ruling, “I’ve got to consider what the law says.”

Main also said proof of the General Assembly’s intent was a law it passed last year clarifying the 1997 law, legislation that was not signed by Governor Terry McAuliffe.

“That particular bit of evidence is ambivalent,” said Moore, and could mean the law is not retroactive but “that’s the way we want it now.”

Main argued that anyone with an interest in the matter had standing, and he described the plaintiffs, some of whom had contributed money for the litigation. That was an argument Moore didn’t seem to buy. “The fact someone funds litigation doesn’t create standing,” he said.

Nor did he go for the fact that one of the plaintiffs, Edward Bergen Fry, is the great-nephew of the sculptor Henry Shrady. “That’s a question for me, just because he’s related to the person who created the statue, how does he have something legally at stake?” asked the judge.

After a 30-minute recess, Moore said he needed more time. He also held off okaying the renaming of Jackson Park because the deed made that name a condition.

In addition, he sustained the city’s argument that the plaintiffs could not claim damages, because there were no actual damages.

In May Moore granted a temporary injunction to prohibit the city from removing Lee while the issue was under litigation. With the city likely to vote to remove the statue of Jackson September 5, and with both statues now covered with black tarps, he’ll be hearing motions on those matters September 6.

He also promised those left at the end of the hearing that someone would be disappointed. “I don’t know how I’m going to rule,” he said. “There’s strong merits on both sides.”