Thread: CA: Activist involved in scuffle with day laborers faces civ

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Activist involved in scuffle with day laborers faces civil suit

Oct 12, 2007

By: EDWARD SIFUENTES - Staff Writer

An anti-illegal immigration activist who was recently acquitted of assault stemming from a brawl in Rancho Penasquitos now faces allegations of battery and defamation in a civil lawsuit stemming from the incident last year.

John Matthew Monti, 36, was cleared Sept. 26 on all charges, including three battery counts, three hate-crime counts and one count of filing a false police report.

An attorney for the day laborers said Thursday that a jury in a civil suit may reach a different conclusion.

The burden of proof is lower in a civil suit than in a criminal case, said Daniel Gilleon, a San Diego attorney representing the day laborers.

Reached Thursday afternoon, Monti's attorney, Allison Aranda, responded to a request for comment by saying someone would call the North County Times about the story. By the evening, no call was received.

At the end of the criminal case against him, Monti said immigrant rights activists had orchestrated the case against him, calling it a "hatchet job." During the trial, each side blamed the other for starting the brawl that ended up in the middle of busy Rancho Penasquitos Boulevard about 11 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 19.

The civil suit filed in San Diego on Thursday alleges that Monti was the aggressor and that he battered the day laborers. The suit also names Jeff Schwilk, founder of the San Diego Minutemen, a North County-based anti-illegal immigration group, and the Fox News Network, alleging they defamed the workers by publishing false reports.

A message left for Schwilk on Thursday evening was not immediately returned.

Monti allegedly recruited Schwilk and other members of the San Diego Minutemen to hand out copies of a poster with the day laborers' photographs and a caption reading: "Wanted (for) robbery, assault and battery," according to the lawsuit.

The poster with the workers' photographs was shown on the Fox News Network on Nov. 29 with Monti's account of the incident, according to the suit. The broadcast included a caption reading: "Manhunt at the Border," according to the suit.

Gilleon said he asked the network for a retraction in January for falsely portraying the workers as criminals on the run. There has been no retraction, Gilleon said.

In court, Aranda argued to the jury that before the brawl, the day laborers had threatened Monti as he snapped photos, and that the fight started when one of them hit the Los Angeles-area schoolteacher from behind.

San Diego Deputy City Attorney Scott Pirrello told jurors during the weeklong trial that Monti started the fight when he allegedly grabbed one of the laborers and chased him into the street. Monti was at the site to photograph day laborers and people who hired them.

Gilleon said he plans to seek damages in excess of $1 million.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/10 ... _11_07.txt

Daniel Gilleon - Attorney

The Key

Defamation lawsuit filed against Minuteman founder, other activist

By: SCOTT MARSHALL - Staff Writer

March 26, 2007

SAN DIEGO ---- An anti-illegal immigration activist from Fallbrook and an Oceanside man who founded the San Diego Minutemen group have been accused in a new lawsuit of defaming a woman who worked with organizations that monitored rallies last year at day-labor sites.

Joanne Yoon, 24, identified in the lawsuit as a college student in Los Angeles and a former San Diego resident, is asking for more than $1 million in damages from Jeff Schwilk of Oceanside, the founder of San Diego Minutemen, and activist Ray Carney of Fallbrook.

The San Diego Minutemen are a group of activists against illegal immigration. The group frequently organizes rallies to protest the hiring of day laborers in North County. Carney said he is not a member of the group.


Filed last week in the Superior Court in San Diego, the lawsuit alleges that Schwilk, Carney and others "targeted" Yoon because of her work with the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation and as an independent contractor for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has observed Minuteman rallies.

Yoon's attorney, Daniel Gilleon, said Yoon was "scared and offended" by comments Schwilk and Carney are alleged to have made about her on the Internet and in e-mails, but that was not why she moved to Los Angeles.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/03 ... 204215.txt

A Year of Legal Woes for Minutemen

As the Minuteman activities grew in frequency and pitch, an opposition group of activists, led by the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation and the ACLU-backed San Diego Legal Observer Coalition, began to shadow the Minutemen, monitoring their activities and matching them video camera for video camera.

San Diego attorney Daniel Gilleon, who has represented the side opposite the Minutemen in various legal actions, claims that two of the most active anti-illegal immigration activists in San Diego began targeting a young ACLU-backed activist in September. Joanne Yoon, who was then a student at San Diego State University, had been filming many of the Minutemen at their rallies and protests.

Gilleon's suit alleges his client was targeted and defamed by Schwilk and a Fallbrook-based activist named Ray Carney. The suit alleges that Carney and Schwilk "defamed Yoon by publishing on the internet unprivileged false statements that imputed to Yoon a want of chastity, and tended to expose her to hatred, contempt, ridicule, obloquy, and cause her to be shunned or avoided."

Specifically, in a series of e-mails that Gilleon says were sent between Schwilk, Carney and others, Yoon was referred to as an "anorexic ACLU slut." Gilleon also alleges that Carney posted a photograph of Yoon with three Latino men on a website accompanied by several lines of defamatory words. Among the insults posted on the site is the contention that Yoon is a "skank," who "beds down" on "a daily basis" with "those little brown Border Hoppers." The post also offers "$50 to 'Anyone' who finds her home address."

Gilleon is asking the court to award his client $1 million.

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles ... 033007.txt

Who was Joanne Yoon, and why did she have a lawsuit against the San Diego Minutemen. What ever happened to it, and why did she have the same lawyer: Daniel Gilleon

http://www.immigrationwatchdog.com/?p=3374

By Leslie Berestein
STAFF WRITER

March 23, 2007


DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO

A local Minuteman leader whose home was searched by San Diego police Wednesday has now been sued for defamation, along with an associate.

Joanne Yoon, a former San Diego State University student, filed the lawsuit yesterday in San Diego Superior Court against Oceanside resident Jeff Schwilk, founder of the San Diego Minutemen, and fellow anti-illegal immigration activist Ray Carney.

According to the complaint, Yoon, 24, was working as an independent contractor for the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego last year. She monitored the activities of the Minutemen at day labor sites as a coordinator for the San Diego Legal Observer Coalition.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metr ... 3yoon.html

Originally Posted by jean

Plenty of comments are being left after this article at the source link.
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I am trying to leave some comments relating the other stories but so far NCT is not posting them.

R/ Skip

Found a couple youtube videos of Roger Hedgecock's radio show regarding what happened:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgdsEg8M4QE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20md-QWkwJI