The smears against Nicholas Sandmann and fellow Covington Catholic High School students began after a heavily edited video surfaced of them face to face with liberal activist Nathan Phillips after a pro-life rally last January in Washington, D.C. Later, however, longer video footage put the lie to media distortions against the teens.
And that’s when prominent Atlanta libel attorney Lin Wood rode to the rescue.
The Atlanta-based Cable News Network was one of the worst when it came to false, incomplete and defamatory reporting against Sandmann and his friends, Wood and Kentucky attorney Todd McMurtry maintained. Their passionate defense paid off this week when the network was forced to settle the lawsuit Sandmann filed against it.
The settlement amount was not disclosed during a Covington, Kentucky, hearing but it the attorneys sought $75 million for harm to Sandmann’s reputation and $200 million in punitive damages.
“The CNN accusations are totally and unequivocally false and CNN would have known them to be untrue had it undertaken any reasonable efforts to verify their accuracy before publication of its false and defamatory accusations,” the suit read. “CNN was probably more vicious in its direct attacks on Nicholas than The Washington Post. And CNN goes into millions of individuals’ homes,” Wood said in a Fox News interview.
The lawsuit came after an independent investigation confirmed the students told the truth about their confrontation with the drum-beating activist Phillips. The report by Greater Cincinnati Investigation, Inc. states that the teens, many of whom wore Donald Trump caps, did not initiate the confrontation or use any racial slurs against Phillips or the radical Black Hebrew Israelites group that was nearby.
“We found no evidence of offensive or racist statements by students to Mr. Phillips or members of his group,” the report states. “We found no evidence that the students performed a ‘Build the Wall’ chant.”
