Friday, October 18

Welcome to the Office of Human Life & Dignity's   TRIAL BLOG.  We hope to provide daily reports, from personal observation, of the jury trial now taking place in San Francisco, in the federal court for the Northern District of California:  Planned Parenthood Federation of America vs. Center for Medical Progress (PPFA v. CMP).

PPFA v. CMP is a civil trial, in which the plaintiff abortion-providers are suing the defendant abortion-investigators for large monetary awards for damages. A separate trial of these same defendants for criminal conduct may possibly occur in the future, in San Francisco Superior Court, for felony charges that the Attorney General of California has filed against them for alleged violations of California law. 

For a brief but thorough background and history, see our webpage LEARN ABOUT THE CASE.  For a quick primer on what has happened thus far in PPFA v. CMP and what is at stake, see this article on Life Site News.

Planned Parenthood COO reports "the saddest thing about this trial...."

On Friday, October 18, the proceedings in Courtroom 2, before Judge William H. Orrick, ran from 7:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. The bulk of the day was devoted to the testimony of Melvin Galloway, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. He and his counsel entered into evidence numerous exhibits. These were contracts and invoices from security consultants hired by PPFA beginning in mid-2015 after CMP had released into public view some of its undercover videos of conversations with PPFA employees and affiliates. The purpose of these exhibits is to document the monetary awards that the PPFA is seeking from CMP.

Mr. Galloway consistently referred to CMP’s activities as “attacks”, though later, in cross-examination, it was clarified that no physical or material attacks were being referenced, but rather “attacks on Planned Parenthood’s brand.”

In the course of his testimony, Mr. Galloway declared, “The thing that makes me saddest about this case is that every dollar we spend on it is a dollar we can’t spend on providing health care.”

The overarching theme of the plaintiffs’ presentations was that because of CMP’s activities PPFA had been forced to improve its procedures for identifying and vetting participants in its conferences and events—and that these costs should be recoverable from CMP. After proceedings had closed for the day, we spoke with Catherine Wynne Short, of Life Legal Defense Foundation, one of the defense attorneys, about this concept. “Does that make sense?” she said, “Try this analogy. If you have a house and you see someone come uninvited onto your property, and you decide to build a fence around the house—can you sue the trespasser for the cost of your fence?”

COMING UP:  The trial recommences on Monday, October 21, at 7:30 a.m., and defendant David Daleiden is scheduled to testify.
                                                                                                                                  ---  by J. A. Gray, Correspondent