Civil Lawsuit Strategy
Dees was one of the principal architects of an innovative strategy of using civil lawsuits to secure a court judgment for money damages against an organization for a wrongful act and then use the courts to seize its assets (money, land, buildings, other property) to pay the judgment.
SPLC lawyers used this legal strategy to hold the Klan accountable for the acts of its members. In 1981, Dees successfully sued the Ku Klux Klan and won a $7 million judgment for the mother of Michael Donald, a black lynching victim in Alabama. Payment of the judgment bankrupted the United Klans of America and resulted in its national headquarters being sold to help satisfy the judgment. All funds secured in this manner were paid to the family of the deceased.
A decade later, in 1991, Dees obtained a judgment of $12 million against Tom Metzger's White Aryan Resistance. He was also instrumental in securing a $6.5 million judgment against Aryan Nations in 2001. Dees' most famous cases have involved landmark damage awards that have driven several prominent neo-Nazi groups into bankruptcy, effectively causing them to disband and re-organize under different names and different leaders.
Dees' legal actions against racial nationalist groups have made him a target of criticism from many of these organizations. He has received numerous death threats from these groups, and a number of their web sites make strong accusations against him and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Over 30 people have been jailed in connection with plots to kill Dees or blow up the center. Most recently a July 29, 2007, letter allegedly came from Hal Turner, a radio talk show host, paid FBI informant and white supremacist, after the SPLC filed a lawsuit against the Imperial Klans of America (IKA) in Meade County, Kentucky. During the IKA trial a former member of the IKA said that the Klan head told him to kill Dees. Morris Dees and William F. McMurry represented the plantiff in the trial against the IKA in November, 2008.
Read more about this topic: Morris Dees
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