A conservative journalist has won a $300,000 judgment against three Antifa members who sent him to the hospital by attacking him in the notorious “milkshake incident” at a 2019 protest in Portland.
Andy Ngo won from Multnomah County Circuit Judge Chanpone Sinlapasai the maximum judgment he had sought against the left-wing activists.
The finding was no surprise as the three defendants — Katherine Belyea, Madison Allen, and Joseph Evans — refused to show for the case and had a default judgment entered against them.
Mr. Ngo had lost a civil lawsuit earlier this month against two other masked Portland activists over a different assault, but John Hacker and Elizabeth Richter showed up for the trial and the jury did not find them liable.
Mr. Ngo, a gadfly conservative known for covering Antifa protests and thus a frequent target for them, called this week’s finding and the maximum judgments — $100,000 against each of the three — “a small vindication.”
“She gave the full amount that she could, the full amount that I requested in my lawsuit,” he told National Review. “That’s quite telling. It’s such a different outcome from the jury verdict.”
The three demonstrators attacked Mr. Ngo as he tried to cover a violent Antifa protest in Portland in June 2019, punching Ngo, hitting him with signs, and throwing milkshakes at him that Mr. Ngo says were loaded with concrete.
A video of the attack went viral, often reposted by celebrating leftists.
“Those who wish harm on me, they always reference it as the ‘milkshake incident,’ to mock my injuries and celebrate it,” Mr. Ngo said during the hearing. “The near-death experience, for it to continually be a joke to violent extremists, it’s distressing and it’s scary.”
Actually getting the money from the three rioters might prove difficult, Mr. Ngo acknowledged to National Review.
Mr. Ngo did acknowledge though that collecting the money awarded to him could prove difficult.
“This is part of the reason why you don’t see victims of Antifa suing them — a lot of them are losers with no assets,” he said.
“They escape accountability in the criminal-justice system because they carry out criminal activities in jurisdictions [like Portland] where there are district attorneys like Mike Schmidt. And civilly, they also escape justice because the resources that it takes to go through this legal process are immense,” he said.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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