The Washington Post
Sunday, April 21, 1991
$58 Million Libel Award for Ex-Prosecutor
WACO, Tex.-A jury ordered a television station and a reporter to pay a record $58 million to a former prosecutor, saying they defamed him in a 1985 series.
Vic Feazell, the former McLennan County district attorney, said the 11-part series by Dallas television station WFAA and reporter Charles Duncan ruined his reputation and led to an FBI investigation.
The series accused him of taking payoffs in exchange for dismissing drunken driving cases. Feazell, who contended in a lawsuit the series was malicious, inaccurate and defamatory, was acquitted of federal racketeering charges in 1987. He resigned the next year to enter private practice in Waco.
Mike McCarthy, senior vice president and general counsel of A.H. Belo Corp., which owns WFAA, said Friday that the verdict will be challenged.
The libel award exceeds the $34 million a jury ordered the Philadelphia Inquirer to pay in May l990 over a 1973 story that criticized a lawyer’s handling of a homicide case when he was an assistant district attorney.
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