JUDGE TOSSES BULK OF LIBEL JUDGMENT AGAINST DOW JONES.Byline: Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. A federal judge in Houston on Friday threw out most of a $222.7 million libel verdict against Dow Jones Dow Jones the best known of several U.S. indexes of movements in price on Wall Street. [Am. Hist.: Payton, 202] See : Finance & Co., a record amount that stunned the newspaper industry and free-press advocates. The ruling by Judge Ewing Werlein eliminated $200 million in punitive damages Monetary compensation awarded to an injured party that goes beyond that which is necessary to compensate the individual for losses and that is intended to punish the wrongdoer. awarded to the Houston investment firm MMAR MMAR Marijuana Medical Access Regulations MMAR Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers (TV Show) Group Inc. Actual damages Noun 1. actual damages - (law) compensation for losses that can readily be proven to have occurred and for which the injured party has the right to be compensated compensatory damages, general damages of $22.7 million still stand against Dow Jones, which publishes The Wall Street Journal. But Dow Jones spokesman Richard Tofel said the company would seek to reduce that amount. ``We are gratified grat·i·fy tr.v. grat·i·fied, grat·i·fy·ing, grat·i·fies 1. To please or satisfy: His achievement gratified his father. See Synonyms at please. 2. that the court took a substantial first step in reducing the damages that the jury sought to impose upon Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal by eliminating the punitive award against Dow Jones,'' Tofel said. There was no comment from MMAR attorney Kenneth Morris. A telephone message left on his Houston office answering machine wasn't immediately returned. First Amendment attorneys welcomed the decision, calling the original amount an astonishing a·ston·ish tr.v. as·ton·ished, as·ton·ish·ing, as·ton·ish·es To fill with sudden wonder or amazement. See Synonyms at surprise. sum and the latest in a series of large libel judgments against the news media. The ruling came two months after a seven-member jury decided that five sentences in a Journal article by Laura Jereski published Oct. 21, 1993, were false and defamatory against MMAR. Lawyers for MMAR blamed the article for the investment firm's demise later that year. Dow Jones argued during the two-week trial that the firm collapsed for other reasons and that the disputed sentences were accurate or substantially true. MMAR routinely recorded clients' phone calls but could not produce one conversation that showed it lost a client because of the article, Dow Jones attorney David Donaldson told the judge last month in a motion to reduce the jury's award. Donaldson admitted there were inaccuracies in the story. But he said the punitive damages were inappropriate unless Jereski and her editors knew they were false. He said they believed the story was accurate. Morris had urged Werlein to approve the award, calling the amount consistent with U.S. Supreme Court decisions in libel cases. The award beat the previous record of $58 million against A.H. Belo Corp. in a 1991 libel case in Waco, Texas. That case later was settled. |
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