Amway-P&G damages alleged improper

Amway-P&G damages alleged improper

	Published : Fri, 30 Mar 2007 23:59 By : Agencies Print this Story

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A jury decided that Procter & Gamble Co. suffered no damages from devil-worshipping rumors but awarded the consumer-products maker nearly $20 million by counting the number of P&G lawyers in the courtroom, three jurors said in affidavits filed in federal court.

Lawyers for the four Amway distributors ordered to pay $19.25 million are trying to get the verdict thrown, alleging improper deliberations.

They asked a federal judge this week to investigate misconduct on the 11-member jury. The Lanham Act, which governs marketplace competition, allows only judges the discretion to award attorney fees, the lawyers said.

P&G, which filed its own motion this week asking the judge to triple the damages, said Friday it was unaware of allegations about the jury.

Amway's independent distributors were accused of using a company voice mail system to spread an oft-repeated but false rumor that P&G's logo -- a bearded, crescent man-in-moon looking over a field of 13 stars -- was a symbol of Satanism.

In sworn statements, three members of the Utah jury said the full panel unanimously concluded the Cincinnati-based company had failed to show any lack of sales from the recurring rumors since the 1970s.

But the panel wanted to compensate P&G for 'out-of-pocket' legal expenses, the three jurors said.

So they counted the number of lawyers at P&G's courtroom table and guessed how many hours they worked over a decade of litigation, the jurors said. The jury disagreed only on how much lawyers typically charge, with estimates ranging up to $600 an hour.

'I had heard no evidence of attorneys fees so I stuck with zero,' one juror, Bryan Tuttle, said in his affidavit. 'After soliciting numbers from everybody and averaging them, we knew what a general ballpark figure would be.'

Totals offered by each juror ranged from zero to $50 million and averaged out at $19.25 million, he said.

Juror Tanya Platt said two others on the panel 'did not want Procter & Gamble to get anything,' raising questions about whether the verdict for P&G was unanimous, as it was supposed to be.

Lawyers for the Amway distributors said the details surfaced when Tuttle alerted Randy Haugen, who was one of the defendants.

'We spoke to several jurors to confirm what the one juror claimed,' Haugen's attorney, Joseph Joyce, said Friday. 'One juror felt so strongly she wrote a letter to the court about the deliberations.'

Joyce said he was preparing a motion asking U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart to throw out the verdict, which could lead to a new trial.

One of P&G's trial attorneys, Tracy H. Fowler, said he was aware of the affidavits and planned to ask the judge to ignore them.

'I don't have any evidence beyond what the verdict was,' he said.

Prior to the March 16 verdict, P&G had suffered legal defeats in other states after suing people it accused of helping spread the Satan rumors. Early in the Utah case, the late U.S. Magistrate Ronald Boyce warned P&G it faced a have ry heavy, heavy burden' trying to collect damages.

'You could probably get three ladies ... to say that maybe they didn't buy a bar of soap or something and that is going to be your damage claim,' said Boyce, according to a court transcript.

P&G maintained Friday that the rumors cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales and internal expenses. It took aggressive legal action for the rumors to start falling off, P&G spokesman Terry Loftus said.

Amway is a subsidiary of Alticor Inc., a global direct-sales company based in Ada, Mich., with an army of distributors who sell a broad range of products.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported the affidavits on its Web site Friday.