Jury orders blogger to pay $8.4 million to ex-Army colonel she accused of rape.
WAPO-
Col. David “Wil” Riggins, after a highly decorated Army career that included tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, was on the verge of promotion to brigadier general in July 2013 when he got a phone call at the Pentagon from the Army’s criminal investigation division to come in for a meeting. Once there, he learned that a blogger in Washington state had just accused him of raping her, when both were cadets at West Point in 1986. An investigation was underway.
Riggins waived his right to an attorney and immediately gave a statement denying any sexual assault of the woman, Susan Shannon of Everett, Wash. Shannon also cooperated with the CID investigation, which could not “prove or disprove Ms. Shannon’s allegation she was raped,” the CID report concluded. But in the spring of 2014, with the armed forces facing heavy criticism for their handling of sexual assault cases, Secretary of the Army John McHugh recommended removing Riggins from the list for promotion to general. Riggins promptly retired.
Then, Riggins sued Shannon for defamation, claiming that every aspect of her rape claim on the West Point campus was “provably false,” and that she wrote two blog posts and a Facebook post “to intentionally derail [his] promotion” to brigadier general. During a six-day trial that ended Aug. 1, a jury in Fairfax County, Va., heard from both Riggins and Shannon at length. And after 2½ hours of deliberation, they sided emphatically with Riggins, awarding him $8.4 million in damages, an extraordinary amount for a defamation case between two private citizens. The jury ordered Shannon to pay $3.4 million in compensatory damages for injury to his reputation and lost wages, and $5 million in punitive damages, “to make sure nothing like this will ever happen again,” according to one of the jurors.
From Chicks on the Right (who had there own run in with the accuser)
nothing she said held up in court:
“Everything in that blog post was provably false,” said Stephen Horvath, Riggins’s lawyer, “and could not have happened.” He said no free beer was provided on the West Point campus, that drinking was prohibited by cadets, that Riggins did not have a car in 1986, would not have been allowed to drive it on campus, and that anyone emerging from the pedestrian tunnel couldn’t have been seen from the road. Shannon’s claims that her grades plunged after the event and that she returned her class ring were also untrue, Horvath said.
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The left keeps saying that “this is not a trial!!!! This is a job interview!!!”
Fine. If this accuser causes Kavanaugh to lose a Supreme Court seat there WILL be a trial, I’m positive of that. So she better have proof of her claims or else she could quite possibly be a financial slave to the Kavanaughs for the rest of her life.
Ford is knee-deep in libel and slander territory; the last thing she wants to pile on top of that are perjury charges.
Ruin the bitch. Then do it again.
Not sure which ending I would like most. Ideally he gets unconfirmed, sues her and wins, Ginsburg dies from a heart attack after sex with Michael Moore, and Kavanaugh is put on the bench…….may not happen just like that though.
I’m sure Anenatti will be glad to pony up the money… especially since he owes so much in taxes!
When it comes right down to it, that SOB should be just as culpable in this whole thing!
Gee, wonder why her team of liberal handlers would omit a detail like that?
How much is the Washington 3 ring circus costing US tax payers in lost tax dollars. This mess, if real, should have been handled by local law enforcement people.
About time these vengeful women started paying for their lies. Here in Maine a man was just awarded $375,000 in a similar suit.
This country has become a lawless playground for the elite and the radical democrat extremists. The same government thugs, both demon rats and repubes, that designed this assassination plan against Kavanaugh are gonna allow him to get justice by suing her for defamation? ?? They wont rig that too??? You mean the FISA judge that conspired with Mueelr and Rosenstine and doubles as the Defamation Court judge is gonna let that happen? Nahhhhhh ….. i dont think so.
Ford and her lawyers are carefully keeping her off the hook for anything. As of now she couldn’t even be proven to have made an allegation. Feinstein is holding in her hand a list, er, a letter, but where did it come from, through how many cutouts? Who wrote it? Want to try proving it was even her? It has a name at the bottom but it doesn’t even appear to have a signature. It repeatedly asserts confidentiality, so she can’t be directly accused of made a public charge. The text shows signs of alteration. She in all probability won’t say anything under oath except perhaps her name. I wouldn’t want to be in court trying to prove she even exists, give the absurdly paltry nature of the “evidence” on offer to date.
All that said, they’d still better find a way to make her and/or the donkeys pay – and pay and pay – or this is the new normal.
I’m surprised Ford hasn’t started a GoFundame account to pay her “legal fees”.
Shannon’s attorneys should have to pay a substantial amount of judgement.
If a man is guilty of a sexual assault, string him up and give him the max. If a women accuses a man of sexual assault, and it is proven that she is a liar, give her the same sentence that he would have received. Forget the money, put this bitch in jail and start teaching some lessons.
Burn in hell you lying bitch.
Do not let this slide Kavanaugh / Republicans / DOJ. PROSECUTE and TEACH Democrats a LESSON! If you are perjuring for political gain – PROSECUTE!
I doubt she has a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out through.
The letter is real. Just ask the guy who faked Baracks birth certificate.
The “Fords”? Plural? You think “he’s” had any say (Other than “Yes ma’am.”) since they met?
Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Ow! I think I popped some… Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Ford:
“If he wins and sues me for defamation, I’ll fight it all the way up to the Supreme C…
“Oh, wait…”
Beer wasn’t free but was certainly available to cadets of legal drinking age at Ike Hall back in 1979.