Landmark Daleiden case heads to federal court of appeals

Nov 27, 2019 by

by Charles LiMandri, LifeSite:

As lead trial counsel for the defense, many people have asked me what happened to bring about the recent jury verdict in favor of Planned Parenthood against David Daleiden and his co-defendants. Despite over three decades of trial experience, I can tell you that I have never seen anything like this mockery of a trial in San Francisco. Given the liberal venue purposely chosen by Planned Parenthood, we knew from the outset that it would be an uphill battle. It soon became obvious from the early rulings of the federal judge assigned to the case, an Obama appointee, that he was heavily favoring Planned Parenthood. We moved to disqualify the judge because he had ties to Planned Parenthood when he was in private practice and, even while this case was pending in his court, his wife had posted on Facebook that she supported Planned Parenthood. Our request was denied.

Many dozens of motions were filed in the case by both sides and Planned Parenthood won almost every one of them, regardless of the legal support in favor of the defendants’ position. In ruling on the pretrial motions, the court struck the defendants’ key defenses based on “public policy” (meaning there was an obvious public benefit in disclosing Planned Parenthood’s heinous crimes); and the “unclean hands” defense (meaning that Planned Parenthood was responsible for bringing about their alleged damages because of their own wrongful acts). The judge also instructed the jury that the defendants had no First Amendment defense and that the truth of their undercover videos, which were at the center of the dispute, was irrelevant. The judge also refused to instruct the jury that the defendants were not responsible for the conduct of third parties who acted in response to learning of the plaintiffs’ wrongful acts. This was despite the fact that the plaintiffs admitted at trial that the incriminating words spoken by them on the videos were true and accurate.

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