P&G wants jury award left alone

P&G wants jury award left alone

	Published : Sat, 14 Apr 2007 04:10 By : Agencies Print this Story

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Consumer-products giant Procter & Gamble Co., which successfully sued four Amway distributors to dispel rumors of devil-worshipping, is asking a federal judge to uphold a multimillion-dollar award despite allegations of jury misconduct.

Lawyers for the Amway distributors obtained statements from three jurors who said the full panel decided after last month's trial that P&G failed to show it lost sales because of the rumors and didn't deserve a damage award.

Yet the full jury decided to compensate P&G $19.25 million for legal fees, even though it wasn't asked to award attorney fees and had no power to do it, defense lawyers said.

P&G accused the four Amway distributors of helping spread the oft-repeated falsehood that P&G's logo -- a bearded, crescent man-in-moon looking over a field of 13 stars -- was a symbol of Satanism.

Within days, a member of the jury tipped off one of the defendants to the jury's deliberations, and defense lawyers obtained statements from two other jurors confirming how the award was calculated.

The three jurors said the full panel arrived at its award by multiplying the number of lawyers at P&G's courtroom table, guessing how much they charge an hour, and estimating how many hours they worked over a decade of litigation.

The estimates averaged out to $19.25 million, the whistleblowers said.

In court papers filed Thursday, P&G said the reports amounted to 'nothing more than unsworn statements' from three of the 11 jurors -- a 12th had been excused because of illness. Unsworn statements generally are inadmissible in court.

P&G argued that case law discourages judges from questioning a jury's deliberations because otherwise 'no verdict would be safe.'

'We heard from only three jurors. We haven't heard from the other eight. And by and large we are hearing words from the defendants' lawyers who put the affidavits together. Even those are inconsistent and contradictory,' said Tracy H. Fowler, a Salt Lake City lawyer from one of the law firms that represented Procter & Gamble.

Both sides agreed to not interview any more jurors to preserve the judge's opportunity to conduct an impartial investigation.