DALLAS OBSERVER
April 25, 1991
A JURY OF JEERS
LAW: Eager litigant lining up behind victorious Waco libel plaintiff for cases against Channel 8, Bel0
By Tommy Witherspoon
KWACO-Former McLennan County District Attorney Vic Feazell’s record $58 million libel verdict against the Belo Broadcasting Corporation could have been higher, several jurors say. All he had to do was ask.
At least eight of the jurors who returned the huge verdict Friday, April 19, after hearing six weeks of testimony attended a post-trial victory celebration thrown by Feazell at a Waco hotel. Many jurors told Feazell and others that they would have returned a judgment of $100 million against WFAA-TV Channel 8 and the station’s former investigative reporter Charles Duncan if Feazell had sought that much.
“Several of them said that they had never seen anything as egregious as what Duncan put on the air,” says Feazell, referring to the 1985 10-part series by Duncan that was the focus of the suit. The series included allegations of criminal misconduct against Feazell and the Waco district attorney’s office, including the acceptance of bribes in return for case dismissals. “We had a very good, common-sense jury,” adds Feazell.
Feazell, 39, the former county prosecutor from Waco, predicts that the entire judgment with the exception of maybe $2 million awarded for damage to his law practice, will escape appellate scrutiny. “I don’t even think it can be reduced, but if it is. I can’t see it getting reduced by more than $2 million, says Feazell, “And if Belo wants to pay me the $56 million now, I’ll give them the extra $2 million.”
The jury’s verdict in the Feazell case included $17 million in actual damages and $41 million in punitive damages, including $1 million assessed to Duncan.
David McHam, a journalism professor at Southern Methodist University, and other media-law specialists say the damages are the largest ever awarded against a media company in a libel case. The award eclipses the $34 million a jury ordered the Philadelphia Inquirer to pay in May 1990 over a 1973 story that criticized a lawyer’s handling of a homicide case when he was assistant district attorney.
Damages in libel cases frequently are reduced by the trial judge or an appeals court.
“I think the damages will be reduced because I don’t think the appellate courts generally let anything of this magnitude stand," says McHam. “But we just haven’t had that much history in Texas with libel cases. The ones you look at to compare this to go back so far and the judgments were so small.
“It is like this one case becomes the history of libel law in Texas, and I think it will be a text-book case…that people will be studying for years to come. It involves more than just libel. It goes to the very heart of what the news business is about,” McHam says.
Mike McCarthy, vice president and general counsel for the A.H. Belo Corp., Said after the verdict that the company thinks there isn’t a “factual basis to support this jury verdict, which involves a public official.” McCarthy says the company will ask for a new trial, and, if necessary, an appeal.
In the meantime, Feazell, who resigned as district attorney in 1988, is preparing a judgment for the court and will be seeking interest from the verdict in the interim as well as pretrial interest dating back to 1986, when he filed the suit. If granted, and if Belo drags out an appeal or a settlement, it might take a team of accountants to figure out what Feazell and his attorney, Gary Richardson of Tulsa, Oklahoma, stand to reap from the total package.
“If I were a stockholder at A.H. Belo right now, I’d be very concerned,” Feazell said Monday, April 22.
Belo officials said that the verdict, if upheld, wouldn’t significantly affect Belo’s financial…..
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