Anti-government activist and former Idaho gubernatorial candidate Ammon Bundy cannot discharge a $52 million civil court judgment through declaring bankruptcy.
Judge William Thurman, a federal bankruptcy judge in Utah, ruled against Bundy late Tuesday afternoon, siding with St. Luke’s Health System, Idaho’s largest hospital network.
“…the Court concludes that the Idaho Court fully adjudicated that Mr. Bundy acted in a willful and malicious manner in defaming the St. Luke’s Creditors,” Thurman wrote.
Bankruptcy courts can discharge most kinds of debt including in some cases civil court judgments, but not if they are earned through “willful” and “malicious” means.
The case stems from Bundy and his close friend, Diego Rodriguez, claiming in 2022 that St. Luke’s trafficked and kidnapped children to make money while staging protests that briefly shut down its downtown Boise hospital.
Bundy said he was defending Rodriguez’s grandson, who had been taken from his parents by police and brought to St. Luke’s for a health check.
The health system sued the two shortly after the protests, saying they defamed the organization and several of its staff in their repeated online videos and web posts.
After months of fits and starts where Bundy didn’t attend several hearings, the Idaho court issued a default judgment against him.
The decision to skip hearings during the original court case played into Judge Thurman’s ruling.
“That Defendant Bundy received notice of and failed to assert his interests at trial in Idaho demonstrates that he made a conscious choice not to engage with the Idaho Lawsuit or defend himself,” he wrote in his decision Tuesday.
Bundy has repeatedly said he’s simply told the truth about the hospital and its work within the child protection services arena. He wrote in an email he understands the bankruptcy court ruling, but maintains St. Luke’s altered evidence in the original trial – something he never appealed in Idaho.
His responses to St. Luke’s opposition in the bankruptcy case raise constitutional speech arguments, along with due process claims.
Thurman wrote that, “...makes them appropriate in an appeal to a higher Idaho state court (should the applicable Idaho rules authorize an appeal) but not in a proceeding before a United States federal court.”
“In this present situation, the Court’s hands are tied. The law is clear, and to hold otherwise would violate fundamental constitutional principles and well-settled law,” Thurman wrote.
Erik Stidham, the lead attorney for St. Luke's in the case, said in a statement, "Just like everyone else, Mr. Bundy cannot use the bankruptcy process to avoid accountability for a jury verdict based on willful and malicious wrongdoing."
Bundy’s original $52 million judgment has been accruing interest at 10.25% annually since it was first imposed in 2023.
Thurman ordered St. Luke’s to file further documents calculating the total amount it is still owed minus any funds already seized.
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