A promotional video for the documentary No Accident begins by introducing two women who launched a civil suit against 14 leaders of the so-called Alt-Right and a dozen organizations. Roberta Kaplan is a well-known attorney from New York. Karen Dunn hails from D.C..
"Robbie called me out of the blue and said, ‘Do you want to sue the Nazis with me?’" Dunn recalls.
"I’ve been a litigator in New York City for more than two decades. Charlottesville actually shocked me," says Kaplan. "I wanted the toughest possible people to help expose that."
So she hired lawyer Michael Bloch who poured over a huge amount of evidence from the Internet – e-mails and chats in which the defendants planned for violence.
"There were millions of pages of documents in this case. That’s what was so difficult about the litigation," he says.
Some of the defendants, like Richard Spencer, tried to deny their racist views.
"Do you consider yourself a white supremacist?" Bloch asked him.
"No, I don’t," Spencer replied.
"They almost treated it like a game," says Dunn "If I did say that either I was lying then, or I was joking. "
Kaplan agreed. "It was kind of like litigating against teenaged violent truants."
But the legal team used the defendants own words to prove their case, including a profanity-laced rant by Spencer. He had planned to hold a victorious rally after Unite the Right but was, instead, forced to leave town. The lawsuit ended with a judgement of more than $25 million. The defendants are appealing.
The HBO Original documentary film NO ACCIDENT is available on Max.
