Far-right activist Ammon Bundy was ordered to pay over $50 million in damages for accusing a hospital of child trafficking and harassing medical staff.
Bundy and Diego Rodriguez made defamatory statements against the hospital and its employees after Rodriguez’s infant grandson was removed from his family amid health concerns.
According to the Idaho Statesman,
ER doctor, Dr. Rachel Thomas, testified that the 10-month-old baby’s stomach was distended, his eyes were hollow and he was unable to sit up, reminding her of severely malnourished babies she had treated in Haiti, Police said at the time that medical personnel determined the child was malnourished and had lost weight.
Bundy responded by urging his followers to protest at the hospital and at the homes of child protection service workers, law enforcement officers and others involved in the child protection case. Rodriguez wrote on his website that the baby was “kidnapped,” and suggested that the state and people involved in the case were engaged in “child trafficking” for profit.
The jury’s verdict requires Bundy to pay the plaintiffs $6.2 million in compensatory damages and $6.15 million in punitive damages and Rodriguez to pay $7 million in compensatory damages and $6.5 million in punitive damages, according to Holland & Hart, the law firm, representing St. Luke’s.
The remainder of the total $52.5 million in damages was assessed to the People’s Rights Network, Freedom Man Press and the Bundy campaign for governor.
Bundy, who did not attend the trial nor hire a lawyer, saying it would be too costly, denied in the video above he posted Monday on YouTube denied that the baby was mistreated.
Bundy, Rodriguez and their supporters had surrounded St. Luke’s hospital campuses in Meridian and Boise, forcing lockdowns and causing diversion of emergency patients, disruption of planned procedures and cancelation of hundreds of appointments.
In 2014, Bundy’s father, rancher Cliven Bundy, rallied supporters to stop officers from impounding Bundy Ranch cattle over more than $1 million in unpaid fees and penalties for grazing livestock on government land.
BREAKING: A jury delivered its verdict on Monday: $26.5 million in compensatory damages and nearly $26 million in punitive damages. https://t.co/3UQzJVC4x4
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) July 25, 2023
(Photos, screen grabs, YouTube; via US News)
