Anheuser and Maris settle defamation suit

Modern Brewery Age,  August 29, 2005  

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AP--The Maris family and Anheuser-Busch have settled a defamation lawsuit stemming from the brewer's termination of the family's beer distributorship.

Anheuser-Busch Cos Inc. agreed to pay at least $120 million in cash to the family of former home run king Roger Maris as part of a settlement that ended a defamation trial and other litigation, according to a regulatory filing the brewer made Wednesday.

The St. Louis-based company will record a $105 million pretax charge in the third quarter ending Sept. 30 as a result of the settlement with the family owned beer distributorship, Maris Distributing Co., according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Based on the filing, Tom Leritz, an analyst with Argent Capital in St. Louis said, "I don't think it's going to negatively impact the company."

Anheuser-Busch spokesman Rick Oleshak said he couldn't comment. But a spokesman for the Maris family's attorneys, Tom McNicholas, said the actual settlement was higher and called the $120 million "only part of the settlement." He declined to comment further.

The settlement encompasses the defamation lawsuit and a $50 million jury award that the Marises had won against AB in 2001 for ending their beer distributorship contract in 1997. That award had been tied up on appeal.

The agreement was announced Tuesday as a Gainesville jury reached a verdict in the three-week trial after two days of deliberations. The verdict was immediately sealed, but jurors later said they had decided to award the Maris family compensatory damages but not punitive damages.

Neither side disclosed terms of the settlement that came Tuesday just as the jury reached a verdict, which was immediately sealed. The Maris family had been seeking as much as $5 billion.

"The resident smart person down at Anheuser finally said 'Enough'," said Juli Niemann, an analyst with RT Jones in St. Louis. "It shouldn't have happened and now it has come to an end, so I'm sure they're all collectively breathing a sigh of relief."

Walking out of the courtroom, Anheuser-Busch Cos. executive vice president John Jacob, one of the company officials accused of making defamatory remarks, said, "It's over."

Maris' relatives accused the brewer of defamation after company officials publicly said the family's distributorship was deficient and sold repackaged, out-of-date beer. The family claimed in court that A-B plotted to destroy their reputation as a part of a larger scheme to seize the best-performing distributors for Busch family relatives and friends.

"The whole ball of wax is settled," Maris attorney Willie Gary said. "We settled this case today. We settled the 2001 case and any other cases that may have been out there ... Both parties are going to go their separate ways."

The legal fight between A-B and the Maris family had consumed eight years, three trials and millions of dollars in legal fees. The company had given Roger Maris and his brother, Rudy, the distributorship after the slugger ended his baseball career in 1968 with the St. Louis Cardinals, which it then owned. Roger Maris died in 1985.

"We're just glad it's over," said Roger Maris Jr., son of the baseball legend. "It's been a long process."

Calling himself "happy" with the decision, Rudy Maris said the family would likely try to get into another business.

Two jurors, Sarah Avigne and Tanya Gibson, said outside the courtroom later that the jury had decided to award compensatory damages--they refused to say how much--but not punitive damages.

Another juror, Mabel Johnson, said there were several "statements that I think should have been retracted by Anheuser-Busch. The other girls felt the same way."

Johnson said the jury's award was between $90 million and $100 million.

"I'm really happy for them. I'm really happy that we didn't have to say," Johnson, 50, a layaway manager at Wal-Mart, said of the Maris family.

To determine punitive damages if they had ruled in favor of the Maris family, the jurors needed to determine that company officials intentionally made false statements. But Johnson said, "We figured it wasn't an intentional act."

A-B disputed that it had defamed the family when it said their distributorship repackaged beer and denied that it devised a plan to take away the business.

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