SIMPSON ASKS JUDGE TO OVERTURN JURY VERDICT, $33 MILLION DAMAGES.

Byline: Linda Deutsch Associated Press 

Jurors swayed by passion and prejudice tried to destroy O.J. Simpson financially with a $33.5 million judgment in his wrongful death case, lawyers claimed Friday in a bid for a new trial.

``California law makes it abundantly clear that an award of punitive damages may sting but not destroy a defendant,'' defense attorneys Daniel Leonard and Phillip Baker said in a court filing.

In addition, the method by which jurors arrived at compensatory damages for plaintiff Fred Goldman was ``by chance,'' the attorneys argued.

``I'm looking for fairness,'' Simpson said when contacted at home about his lawyers' legal maneuverings.

Simpson, acquitted of killing ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman, was found liable for their deaths by a civil jury.

He was ordered to pay $8.5 million in compensatory damages to Goldman's parents, and $25 million in punitive damages to all plaintiffs.

The defense brief, a so-called memorandum of points and authority, asks Superior Court Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki to overturn the verdicts before an actual motion of appeal is filed.

The lawyers said their jury consultant, Richard Gabriel, found out in post-trial interviews that jurors each wrote on a slip of paper an amount they thought was proper compensation to Goldman for the loss of his son.

The jurors then divided the combined amount by 12 and came up with the total of $8.5 million, the brief said.

``The extraordinary compensatory damage verdict . . . was not the product of a reasoned, objective analysis of the proof offered, but the result of an unbridled exercise of passion, prejudice and sympathy by the jury,'' the attorneys said.

In the punitive damages phase of the trial, they said, the judge erred by refusing to instruct jurors that they could not destroy Simpson financially, but merely were supposed to punish him.

``Instead, the court vaguely instructed the jury only that they must take into account Simpson's financial condition without any further guidance,'' the filing said.

As a result, ``the jury returned grossly excessive punitive damage awards,'' they said. They called the award ``overkill.''

The filing said Simpson is unable to pay anything close to what he has been assessed and that jurors were misled by witnesses who told them he would make millions of dollars from the sale of his likeness and name.

``I'm still waiting for all that income they said I was supposed to get,'' Simpson said in an interview. ``Everything is going out and nothing is coming in.''

Simpson said he wants a new trial because he believes the jury was unfair.

``A decision has been made,'' he said. ``I don't agree with the decision, but the award is so unfair.''

The lengthy brief filed on his behalf cited numerous other reasons for overturning the verdicts.