Texas Lawyer
April 29, l991
Former DA’s Counsel May Have Big Payday
Expert says $58 Million Libel Verdict Vulnerable to Appeal
By Amy Boardman
The week after receiving the largest libel verdict in history on behalf of former Waco district attorney Vic Feazell, Tulsa plaintiff’s attorney Gary Richardson seemed unimpressed.
“I told Vic for five years that this case was going to make history,” said Richardson, who had never before tried a libel case. “We knew the burden of proof was extremely tough, but we knew what the evidence was. If you couldn’t overcome it with our case, you couldn’t overcome it.
“We felt very good about the jury panel from the beginning,” said Richardson, a name partner in Tulsa’s Richardson, a name partner in Tulsa’s Richardson & Meier and the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Oklahoma. It was Richardson’s second time at bat for Feazell, who in 1987 was acquitted by an Austin jury of federal racketeering charges.
Allegations made in a 1985 series broadcast on Dallas’ Channel 8 gave rise to the investigation that preceded the criminal charges, Feazell contended in his libel suit against Belo Broadcasting Corp. and former WFAA-TV reporter Charles Duncan.
If upheld, the $58 million verdict handed down April 19 by a Waco jury will undoubtedly turn out to be a more profitable venture for Richardson than the criminal case, for which Richardson said he was paid “some” legal fees by the financially strapped Feazell during the 1987 proceedings. Richardson took the libel case on a contingency basis, and he declined to reveal the percentage.
Feazell also would not reveal the percentage but said it was more than your typical third.”
“I might recoup my loss, Richardson said jokingly.
The award left some libel experts slack-jawed – over both its enormity and Feazell’s ability to overcome the “actual malice” hurdle and convince a Waco jury that Duncan intentionally smeared the then DA in the 10-part series, which detailed alleged indiscretions by Feazell, now a Waco solo practitioner.
“Vic Feazell was destined for great things,” said juror Debby Borrer, a Waco secretary. “I believe that if that man had not been slandered that he could have gone to bigger things.
“We saw proof that Charles Duncan knew he was putting lies on TV,” she said.
Defense counsel Thomas Leatherbury and John McElhaney, shareholders in Dallas’ Locke Punell Rain Harrell, referred calls to Belo general counsel Michael J. McCarthy, who said the company would pursue “all available post-trial motions and, if necessary appeals.”
“There is no factual basis to support this jury verdict, which involves a public official,” McCarthy said. “Even if this verdict were ultimately required to be paid, it would have no impact on the financial condition of the company.”
McCarthy would not comment further on the case, Vic Feazell v. Belo Broadcasting Corp., et al. No. 86-2227-1 in Waco’s 19th District court. The case was heard by visiting Judge James Meyers, former 125the District judge in Austin, who has not entered a judgment on the jury verdict.
It was doubtful Feazell would have gotten anything but a huge verdict in Waco, where he had become a hero of the working class, said Douglas Ferdon, an assistant professor of journalism at Baylor University who teaches law and ethics.
“People see him as their representative against an intrusive press and a government that’s not responsive to them,” said Ferdon, who was not involved in the case. “I really believe that (his popularity) played a role in the verdict.
“I’m not so sure the reporter was reckless,” he said. “But he may have been a little foolish at times. That really isn’t the same thing under present libel law.
“I don’t think he was reckless, and I think it’s going to get overturned,” Ferdon added.
Feazell’s attorney argued that Duncan’s series prompted a federal investigation into charges that Feazell accepted bribes to dismiss cases, and that Duncan was in cahoots with law enforcement officials hoping to injure Feazell’s credibility.
The motive, plaintiff’s counsel Richardson contended, was to get back at Feazell for exposing false confessions made by convicted murderer Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed to hundreds of murders, several of which he would have had to have been in two places at the same time to commit.
Duncan, an investigative reporter, sought to cultivate Department of Public Safety officers as sources and was eager to avenge their embarrassment over the Lucas case, Richardson said.
“They were in it together,” Richardson said.
The defense argued that Duncan did not start his investigation into Feazell until after the federal inquiry had already begun. The series they argued, was fair comment on a public official.
Juror Borrer, who said she was not pro-Feazell before the trial said she…
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