CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin on Tuesday lost a lawsuit filed by a Muslim-American comedian who said Anglin and his website The Daily Stormer posted a bogus article claiming the comedian was a terrorist.
The entry of default, issued against Anglin and in favor of Dean Obeidallah by the clerk in the Southern District of Ohio, was filed after his attorneys argued in court filings that it jumped through several hoops to serve Anglin with a lawsuit.
The notorious neo-Nazi is an Ohio native. Neither Anglin nor any attorney representing him responded to the suit.
Obeidallah, who tours around the country and has a show on SiriusXM satellite radio, filed the suit in August 2017 that said Anglin and The Daily Stormer put a post on the site that said Obeidallah confessed to being the mastermind behind a May 2017 terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. The attack left 23 people dead and 250 people injured.
The article included a series of pictures of supposed tweets from Obeidallah that were actually fabrications. Obeidallah received threats as a result of the article, the suit says.
Court documents filed Monday by Obeidallah's attorneys say they retained private investigators to serve Anglin with the lawsuit. Investigators tried to find Anglin at five addresses associated with him in the Columbus area.
Obeidallah's lawyers also sent emails to attorneys who represented Anglin in other litigation, as well as to Anglin himself. Nobody responded except for one, Las Vegas attorney Marc Randazza, who said he did not represent Anglin in the Columbus lawsuit, the filings state.
Obeidallah's attorneys also paid for public notices in The Daily Reporter, a Columbus business and legal news publication that serves as the newspaper of record in Franklin County.
Now that Obeidallah has obtained the entry, the question is how much a judgment will be worth. The comedian did not request a specific amount of damages in his original lawsuit, and judges typically hold a hearing to determine that amount if there's no specific request.
No such hearing date was set as of Tuesday.
Subodh Chandra, an attorney for Obeidallah, declined comment. An email sent to Anglin was not immediately returned.
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