Ammon Bundy vs. hospital: $52 million in damages awarded over child trafficking smear campaign
Far-right activist Ammon Bundy, an associate and three groups connected to them must pay more than $50 million in damages for accusing an Idaho hospital of child trafficking and for harassing its medical staff, a jury has decided.
The defamation lawsuit by St. Luke’s Regional Health accused Bundy and Diego Rodriguez of making defamatory statements against the hospital and its employees after Rodriguez’s infant grandson was removed from his family for several days in March 2022 and taken to St. Luke’s amid concerns for his health.
The emergency room physician, Dr. Rachel Thomas, testified that the 10-month-old baby’s stomach was distended, his eyes were hollow and he was unable to sit up, according to the Idaho Statesman newspaper. Police said at the time that medical personnel determined the child was malnourished.
Bundy urged his followers to protest at the hospital and at the homes of child protection service workers, law enforcement officers and others involved in the child protection case. Rodriguez wrote on his website that the baby was “kidnapped,” and suggested that the state and people involved in the case were engaged in “child trafficking” for profit.
The child was returned to his parents after they agreed to a “measure of state oversight,” Rodriguez said.
The hospital claimed Bundy and Rodriguez orchestrated a smear campaign against it. Late Monday, a jury at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise agreed, awarding damages exceeding $50 million, the hospital announced.
A statement on behalf of the law firm representing the plaintiffs said Bundy, Rodriguez and their supporters had surrounded St. Luke’s hospital campuses in Meridian and Boise, forcing lockdowns and causing diversion of emergency patients, disruption of planned procedures and cancelation of hundreds of appointments.
“The jury’s decision imposes accountability for the ongoing campaign of intimidation, harassment and disinformation these defendants have conducted,” St. Luke’s said in a statement. “It also affirms the importance of protecting health care providers and other public servants from attacks intended to prevent them from carrying out their responsibilities.”
Bundy, 47, didn’t attend the trial or hire a lawyer, saying it would be too costly. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the jury’s decision, but in an interview Tuesday with KBOI News Talk radio, he said he was innocent and called the civil trial “illegitimate.”
“I’ve been a thorn in the side of the establishment here in Idaho for quite a while and this is their mechanism to try to destroy me,” Bundy said, adding that he didn’t have funds to pay the damages.
The jury’s verdict requires Bundy to pay the plaintiffs $6.2 million in compensatory damages and $6.15 million in punitive damages and Rodriguez to pay $7 million in compensatory damages and $6.5 million in punitive damages, according to Holland & Hart, the law firm, representing St. Luke’s. The remainder of the total $52.5 million in damages was assessed to the People’s Rights Network, Freedom Man Press and the Bundy campaign for governor.
Bundy and his People’s Rights Network had earlier carried out protests at the Idaho Statehouse over coronavirus-related measures.
He ran for Idaho governor as an independent last year, getting 17% of the vote in the general election.
In 2016, Bundy led a 41-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon, to protest the arson convictions of two ranchers who set fires on federal land where they had been grazing their cattle. Bundy was acquitted of criminal charges in the matter.
The hospital’s lawsuit was filed more than a year ago. Since then, Bundy ignored court orders related to the lawsuit, filed trespassing complaints against people hired to deliver legal paperwork and called on scores of his followers to camp at his home for protection when he learned he might be arrested on a warrant for a misdemeanor charge of contempt of court.