Victims of Charlottesville Rally Eligible for Higher Punitive Damages Against Leaders of “Unite the Right” Rally, Fourth Circuit Rules

As reported by the Washington Post, the AP, Bloomberg Law and Law360, Paul, Weiss and co-counsel won an important appeal in the long-running case on behalf of victims of the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, when the Fourth Circuit overturned a lower court decision capping punitive damages on the entire defendant group at $350,000.

Establishing important precedent that enables future plaintiffs to seek punitive damages that adequately deter defendants’ misconduct, a three-judge panel reversed the district court’s application of a Virginia punitive damages cap, ruling that the cap must be applied on a per-plaintiff basis. The ruling restores at least $2 million in punitive damages for our clients. The panel also affirmed the district court’s finding that defendants were jointly and severally liable.

The decision is a vindication of five years of hard work by Paul, Weiss and co-counsel to obtain a measure of justice for our clients; it also sends a message that defendants’ unconscionable and hateful conduct cannot be tolerated. “Over two years ago, the jury used its $24 million punitive damages award to send an unmistakable message to the defendants and to the public about the outrageous misconduct that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia. While the law compels us to reduce the award, it’s long past time for that message to be delivered,” the panel wrote.

Representing nine plaintiffs, our lawyers, alongside co-counsel Kaplan Hecker & Fink and Cooley, filed suit in October 2017 against 23 principal organizers of and participants in the rally, including most of the leadership of the major white nationalist, white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups nationally. We alleged that they conspired to commit racially motivated violence to “defend Western civilization and white men against perceived enemies—specifically, Jewish persons, Black persons, and their white gentile traitor allies.” After a four-week trial in 2021 where we presented extensive evidence that the organizers had planned for, engaged in and glorified the violence, the jury returned a $26 million verdict, including approximately $2 million in compensatory damages assigned jointly and severally against all defendants, and a historic $24 million in punitive damages.

However, the district court subsequently slashed punitive damages to a total of $350,000, finding that Virginia’s $350,000 punitive damages cap applied across all plaintiffs.

Following that ruling, four defendants—Michael Hill, Michael Tubbs, League of the South and Nathan Damigo—challenged the district court’s decision to hold them jointly and severally liable for compensatory damages, under which each defendant is independently liable for full damages. Meanwhile, in our cross-appeal, we challenged the district court’s interpretation of the Virginia punitive damages cap.

In its ruling, the appeals court reversed the district court’s decision capping all punitive damages at $350,000 and remanded for a correct per-plaintiff application of the cap. While the court did not restore all $24 million of the damages, it restored at least $2 million of damages in holding that Virginia’s punitive damages cap applies on a per-plaintiff basis, rather than across all plaintiffs.

Echoing our arguments, the court reasoned that the cap’s language specifically referred to “all defendants,” but contained no such reference to “all plaintiffs.” The court also noted that, at the time that the statute was enacted, the common law in Virginia largely didn’t allow joinder of separate single-plaintiff “actions,” so the Virginia legislature could not have intended the cap to apply to multiple plaintiffs. The court further agreed with our argument that a per-plaintiff reading serves public-policy interests by encouraging plaintiffs to join claims where appropriate; under the defendants’ reading, plaintiffs would have every incentive to bring individual claims, creating an inefficient result.

The panel also affirmed the district court’s imposition of joint-and-several liability for the compensatory damages. Echoing our arguments, the panel found that the four defendants had forfeited the issue because they had taken only “a passing shot” at challenging the district court’s imposition of joint-and-several liability in the district court—and that, in any event, the district court had correctly imposed joint and several liability, because the defendants were coconspirators and thus liable for all damage stemming from the conspiracy.

The Paul, Weiss team on the appeal included litigation partners Karen Dunn and Jessica Phillips, counsel Yotam Barkai, and former associate Melina Meneguin. The Paul, Weiss trial team also included partner Bill Isaacson and associate Arpine Lawyer.