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\tLOS ANGELES \u2014 An appellate court on Monday upheld a $19 million judgment against \u201cGirls Gone Wild\u201d founder Joe Francis in a slander case filed over his claims that casino mogul Steve Wynn had threatened to kill him.<\/p>\n
\tThe California 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles found no basis to overturn the judgment or order a new trial, and the justices also left in place an injunction barring Francis from repeating the claims.<\/p>\n
\tAfter a 2012 trial, a jury found that Francis\u2019 statements about threats were defamatory, and a judge ordered him not to repeat the statements. Francis and Wynn testified during the trial.<\/p>\n
\tFrancis said he was told Wynn had threatened to hit him in the head with a shovel and have him buried in the desert. Wynn denied making such threats and claimed the statements by Francis damaged his reputation and put his casino license at risk.<\/p>\n
\tA jury initially ordered Francis to pay Wynn $40 million, but a judge later cut the amount by $21 million.<\/p>\n
\tFrancis appealed the verdict, arguing that he initially made the comments in a court proceeding over a gambling debt owed to Wynn and should not be held liable.<\/p>\n
\tHe argued that his comments to \u201cGood Morning America\u201d and to a TMZ reporter merely confirmed his description of the threats, but a three-justice panel of the appellate court disagreed.<\/p>\n
\tMitchell Langberg, an attorney for Wynn, applauded the ruling in a statement.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe will continue to assist Mr. Wynn and Wynn Las Vegas as they vigorously pursue Francis to collect all of his debts to them, including this $19 million judgment,\u201d Langberg wrote.<\/p>\n
\tFrancis called the ruling ridiculous.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe fully expect this to be overturned by the California Supreme Court expeditiously,\u201d Francis said.<\/p>\n
\tIf the ruling is allowed to stand, it should give pause to others who describe threats during court proceedings, he said.<\/p>\n
\tFrancis created the \u201cGirls Gone Wild\u201d video series but said he has had no affiliation with the company for two years.<\/p>\n
No replies were posted for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LOS ANGELES \u2014 An appellate court on Monday upheld a $19 million judgment against \u201cGirls Gone Wild\u201d founder Joe Francis in a slander case filed over his claims that casino mogul Steve Wynn had threatened to kill him. The California…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}