StemExpress v. Center for Medical Progress Lawsuit Dismissed

RANCHO SANTA FE, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 11, 2017) - In July 2015, David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress began releasing the Human Capital Project, an investigative journalism study showing that Planned Parenthood clinics across the nation had partnered with several distributors to illegally profit by selling the remains of aborted babies to biomedical researchers. Two weeks later, StemExpress -- a broker in fetal body parts -- filed a suit to obtain an order preventing the Center for Medical Progress from releasing the results of its investigation into StemExpress.

Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund attorneys defeated that gag order, and have been fighting to defeat StemExpress's remaining claims ever since. On January 10, 2017, the court of appeal would have heard argument on FCDF's motion to strike StemExpress's complaint, but on the eve of the hearing, StemExpress dismissed its complaint and walked away with nothing. The dismissal came in the wake of the issuance of the final report of the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, which had been investigating wrongdoing in the fetal tissue procurement industry. That Panel has referred StemExpress for criminal prosecution for destroying documents that were the subject of congressional inquiries, for profiting from the sale of fetal body parts, and for violating HIPAA laws when collecting fetal body parts.

"The dismissal of this lawsuit, on the eve of an important hearing and in the wake of criminal referrals, shows that StemExpress's time is up," said FCDF President Charles LiMandri. "Cate Dyer and StemExpress would pay $55 for a fetal brain, and then turn around and sell it for $3,340. If you do that, you can hire a lot of attorneys to throw up propaganda lawsuits aimed -- not at vindicating legal rights -- but at influencing public opinion. Propaganda lawsuits are expensive and StemExpress decided this one was no longer worth the money. Hopefully, when Congress removes Planned Parenthood's $500 million annual tax revenue stream, we'll see Planned Parenthood rethinking the merit of its own propaganda lawsuit against David Daleiden and CMP."

Located in San Diego, Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund is a nonprofit, public-interest law firm which defends the conscience rights and religious freedom to persons of all faiths and no faith by providing pro-bono legal services at the trial level.