(Jewish Group) Judge orders Ann Arbor congregants to pay legal fees for the 18-year protesters...

[Behind the Aegis]

Judge orders Ann Arbor congregants to pay legal fees for the 18-year protesters outside their synagogue

In the latest twist in the long-running legal saga over a small group of protesters who have gathered weekly outside a Michigan synagogue for the past 18 years, a judge has ruled that Jewish worshippers who lost a lawsuit against the protesters must pay them more than $150,000 in legal fees.

U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Roberts ruled on Jan. 25 that the two plaintiffs — including one who is a Holocaust survivor — and their lead attorney who had sued the group of five protesters in 2019 had filed a frivolous lawsuit against “peaceful protesters.” Therefore, Roberts ruled, the defendants were entitled to compensation to cover the cost of their legal defense.

It is not unusual for courts to order the losing side of a lawsuit to pay their opponent’s attorney fees, although the ruling is less common in civil rights suits.

One week before the attorney-fee ruling, Marc Susselman, the attorney who represented one of the two plaintiffs in the lawsuit, had appealed the lawsuit’s dismissal to the U.S. Supreme Court, calling the ruling “a reversible error” and disputing the court’s claim that the lawsuit was frivolous.

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Whiffs of Kristallnacht. "You, the Jew, are responsible for the hate directed at you and must pay for it...again, now in Deutch Marks...er, dollars."