Jack Nicklaus was awarded $50 million by a Palm Seaside County jury on Monday in a defamation lawsuit in opposition to his former firm and enterprise companions, based on a information report.
The 85-year-old golf icon and North Palm Seaside resident filed the lawsuit in Palm Seaside County courtroom in 2023 in opposition to Nicklaus Firms LLC, the corporate’s government chairman and billionaire banker Howard Milstein and government vice chairman of Nicklaus Firms Andrew O’Brien.
The lawsuit centered on statements that had been written in one other lawsuit filed in New York, made by the corporate “at Mr. Milstein’s route,” based on the criticism in Nicklaus’s Palm Seaside County case. The New York lawsuit included false claims that Nicklaus wished to simply accept a management function with the controversial Saudi golf league LIV Golf, and people claims had been broadly circulated to information reporters, purchasers and others within the {golfing} world, Nicklaus’s attorneys wrote.
Nicklaus met with a number of Saudi officers thrice in 2021 and through one was requested “to simply accept a management function with the brand new Saudi golf league for what promised to be a major amount of cash,” based on the Nicklaus’s lawsuit criticism.
“Mr. Nicklaus knew instantly that it was one thing he couldn’t do and turned it down on the spot,” his attorneys wrote within the criticism. “The supply was then elevated to even higher quantities of cash, however Mr. Nicklaus continued to face agency.”
Affiliation with LIV Golf had turn out to be “massively controversial” by 2022, when the New York lawsuit was filed, Nicklaus’s lawsuit criticism stated. Nicklaus’s attorneys alleged that Milstein wished to tarnish Nicklaus’s fame, who helped create the PGA Tour, and portrayed the corporate within the criticism as having “saved Mr. Nicklaus from himself” by convincing him to not discover the cope with the Saudi league.
The statements had been included within the New York lawsuit criticism a yr after Nicklaus declined the supply, his attorneys wrote within the Palm Seaside County criticism, and greater than 70 information retailers wrote articles together with them.
Throughout closing arguments Monday, Milstein’s and the corporate’s lawyer Barry Postman instructed jurors the case was merely a “enterprise dispute,” the Palm Seaside Submit reported, and that there was no proof Nicklaus’s fame was broken.
The six-person jury’s verdict discovered the corporate participated within the false publishing of information that uncovered Nicklaus to “ridicule, hatred, distrust, mistrust or contempt,” based on the Palm Seaside Submit. Whereas discovering the corporate liable, a portion of the six-person jury’s verdict was in favor of Milstein and O’Brien, which means they aren’t required to pay damages as properly, the newspaper reported.
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