Metzger Asks Higher Court to Overturn $12.5-Million Penalty

White supremacist Tom Metzger has filed formal notice of his plan to appeal a $12.5-million civil judgment against him, his son and their White Aryan Resistance group.

Metzger, of Fallbrook, asked the Oregon Court of Appeals on Monday to overturn the judgment stemming from the November, 1988 beating death of a black man in Portland by racist skinheads.

A circuit court jury in October awarded $12.5 million to the estate of Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian immigrant. Jurors found that the Metzgers incited the death of Seraw.

Metzger said in his notice to appeal that the First Amendment right of free speech should have protected him from being liable in the case.

He also said he plans to argue that Circuit Judge Ancer L. Haggerty made legal errors during the Portland trial.

Metzger’s notice of appeal lists 14 areas upon which he plans to base his appeal. For the most part, the 14 points are claims of procedural errors.

In closing arguments in the case and shortly after jurors returned the verdict, Metzger alleged that the jury was biased against him. But he made no allegation of that in his notice of appeal.

He did say in the notice that Haggerty allowed attorney Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented Seraw’s estate in the case, to “conceal bribed witnesses.”

Metzger also asked the appeals court to order that none of his property, such as his home and business, be seized to pay off the judgment until the appeal is decided. Haggerty ruled earlier that Metzger should have to post a $12-million security bond before such a request could be granted. Metzger said at the time he had nowhere near that much money.

Lawyers in San Diego County are working to seize Metzger’s home, business and other assets to pay the judgment against him.