Difficulties Collecting on Metzger Suit Told

Now that Tom Metzger and his white supremacist organization have been ordered to pay nearly $9 million for inciting the murder of an Ethiopian student in Portland, Ore., the victim’s family faces a task that might be even more formidable than winning the judgment--collecting it.

It is unlikely that Metzger and the White Aryan Resistance--his organization to promote racial hatred--have $9 million. Metzger lives in a modest Fallbrook home worth little more than $100,000, according to estimates. He drives two older cars, and from all appearances, his television repair business has not made him rich.

But no one knows just how much Metzger and WAR are really worth. The organization collected most of its revenue in cash or money orders, and there is no telling how much of that money has been spent or stashed away.

State law says that whatever goes uncollected in 20 years will remain beyond the grasp of the law.

“For 20 years, Tom Metzger and his son, John, are going to have me or someone else following them around with our hands out,” said James McElroy, the San Diego lawyer who is assisting civil rights attorney Morris Dees in collecting the award ordered on Monday by a Portland jury.

“Our top priority is to compensate the family of the decedent. We want to give them some money. A side benefit of that is that, if we can shut down Mr. Metzger’s hate business, he’ll no longer be preying on these 15- and 16-year-old skinheads. He won’t be selling hate to them, and reaping the rewards from their violent acts,” McElroy said.

In what was cast as a major setback to the white supremacist movement, the jury awarded $12.5 million to the family of Mulugeta Seraw, a 27-year-old Ethiopian immigrant living in Portland who was beaten in the head with a baseball bat when he was attacked by skinheads in November, 1988.

The jury found that the two assailants who pleaded guilty in the slaying were incited by the Fallbrook-based Metzgers and WAR’s racial hate campaign. Tom Metzger, 52, was ordered to pay $5 million in punitive damages; his son, John, 22--who heads WAR’s youthful skinhead faction--was ordered to pay $1 million; WAR was assessed $3 million, and each of the two skinheads was told to pay $500,000 each. Each of the five also was ordered to pay 20% of the $2.5-million balance, which represented compensatory damages.

Because Metzger’s actions were found by the jury to be willful, he cannot file bankruptcy to avoid the judgment.

Metzger--who was not criminally charged in the slaying--did not return telephone calls. But after the jury’s verdict last week, Metzger said the judgment elevated him as a martyr to white America and that, with nothing else to lose, he was free to promote his cause.

So what happens next?

The Portland judgment will be transferred to San Diego Superior Court so it can be executed locally. The necessary filing of documents is expected on Monday, McElroy said.

Within several weeks, the two Metzgers will be subpoenaed to testify as to their assets. Then, with a judge’s permission, the San Diego County marshal’s office could seize personal assets--ranging from the television business equipment, to a trailer used for Metzger rallies, to the cars. They could be in authorities’ hands within weeks, to be sold at auction.

The Fallbrook house would be appraised and sold at auction. This should happen, McElroy said, within “the next several months.” However, no matter how much money the house fetches, Metzger, under the state’s homestead laws, gets to keep $45,000.

Next, a judge will determine how much of the income from Metzger’s television business should go to paying off the judgment. Metzger would be allowed to keep some money to support himself and his wife.

Getting WAR to pay will be more difficult.

Among the possibilities, McElroy said, “is to create a receivership and actually take over WAR, and then the receiver would have the key to the box.”