Jury Awards Falwell $200,000 Damages

Flynt Is Cleared of Libel Charge

ROANOKE, Dec. 8, 1984 -- A federal jury here tonight found that publisher Larry W. Flynt, his sex magazine Hustler and its distributing company did not libel television evangelist Jerry Falwell with a parody of a liquor advertisement.

Falwell had sought $45 million from Flynt, his magazine and the distributing company for libel, invasion of privacy and emotional distress.

But after finding that Flynt had caused Falwell emotional injury, the jury awarded him an unexpectedly small sum of $200,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.

The eight-woman, four-man jury deliberated for more than six hours before determining that Flynt and Hustler together should pay Falwell $100,000 in compensatory, or actual damages, and $50,000 each in punitive damages.

Federal Judge James C. Turk had dismissed the invasion-of-privacy count earlier in the week-long trial.

Falwell, whose lawyers had asked the jury for at least $10 million in punitive damages, had said earlier this evening that only an award of at least $500,000 would be enough to "teach Mr. Flynt a lesson."

But Falwell claimed a small victory, anyway.

"Obviously when you sue, you sue for the world and get what you can," he said. "The idea was to punish Mr. Flynt and his ilk. At least the world knows he can be punished and lose a lawsuit."

Falwell's attorney, Norman Roy Grutman, a New York lawyer whose flamboyant courtroom style and clashes with Flynt had kept the courtroom crackling, was more blunt, attributing the loss to a possible miscalculation of the jury's personality.

"It was a disappointment, but then again I'm accustomed to metropolitan juries who award these kinds of damages for a mosquito bite," said Grutman.

The jury's verdict seemed to surprise many out-of-town observers, as well as a few participants, primarily because the assumption through much of the trial had been that, no matter how effective the defense's arguments, an all-white, all-Protestant southwest Virginia jury would side with Falwell.

Roanoke attorney Art Strickland, the local counsel on Flynt's team of Los Angeles attorneys, said that he was elated at the jury's actions, which attorneys for both sides said could have widespread impact.