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| David Daleiden photo credit: American Life League / Flickr |
Daleiden and the CMP released a series of videos in July 2015 showing undercover conversations with Planned Parenthood executives. These videos exposed Planned Parenthood's practice of harvesting and selling body parts from aborted children, but the video creators were immediately sued by Planned Parenthood.
The abortion corporation claimed that the videos caused millions of dollars in damages to their organization, and the pro-life undercover journalists were found guilty in a 2019 jury trial. The defendants were found liable on claims for fraud, trespass, racketeering, and unlawful recording.
Planned Parenthood spent large sums of money on reputation repair services and consultations to help them avoid being caught by undercover investigators in the future, but Life Legal argues that those costs are not damages caused by Daleiden or the CMP. In total, the judgment awards Planned Parenthood $2.4 million in damages and $13.7 million in attorney costs.
If the jury's ruling is struck down by the Ninth Circuit, all of the awards from the lower court will fall.
"This should be an easy case for the Ninth Circuit," said Catherine Short, Life Legal's Vice-President of Legal Affairs. "The trial judge let in so much prejudicial testimony that the defendants were denied a fair trial. But more importantly, the undisputed evidence showed that Planned Parenthood had no damages. It had no case, and this should never have even gotten to a jury."
