Jesse Ventura, a former governor of Minnesota won a long legal battle on Tuesday in a US District Court in St.Paul. The jury awarded a total of $1.8 million as damages to the 63-year-old for causing harm to his reputation and unfair enrichment against the estate of late Navy SEAL-turned author Chris Kyle.
Ventura’s lawyers said the outcome of the defamation case cleared their contention that Kyle indeed had made-up a story about him in the 2012 bestseller “American Sniper.” However, the former Navy frogman’s reputation has been sullied forever.
The court found that Kyle defamed Ventura by making up a passage in his book which described Ventura getting into a fight in a bar in California. Experts believe that it was a difficult case for the former politician to win especially being a public figure as he had to prove actual malice.
It took a week for the jury to come to a decision after the beginning of deliberations as the lawyers from both sides took a gamble and lowered their threshold to elicit a verdict which was declared three weeks after the trial began. Both the sides agreed that the verdict need not be unanimous and said that they would accept any verdict even if eight of the jury members come to an agreement.
The numbers finally tilted in favor of the former wrestler and he won the verdict 8-2. Kyle’s wife Taya Kyle was evidently astonished and hurt by the verdict. They are considering all the legal options available to them before they make their next move.
After the verdict, the jury also had to award damages to Ventura for the harm caused to him. They had to find out whether Ventura suffered any financial losses as a result of the statement made by Kyle in his book. Ventura’s attorney David Bradley Olsen stated that Kyle’s estate earned close to $6 million from the sale of the book as well as through royalties and claimed a compensation of $5 million.