Attorney won’t comment on threat or settlement
A Santa Monica man found liable two months ago for defrauding associates is threatening to sue the Santa Monica Daily Press because he claims the newspaper’s reporting of the trial has and could harm his future business associations.
Cyril Viguier through his attorney Monday threatened to sue reporter John Wood, his editor and the paper for allegedly misrepresenting the jury’s finding in a Dec. 27 report on the case.
A Santa Monica Superior Court jury held on Dec. 24, 2003, that Viguier and his company, Surf Channel, LLC., defrauded and broken contractual obligations with two associates who helped his company create extreme sports programs for cable television. The jury awarded them $884,000 in damages. The two parties have since settled outside of court. (See related story).
Viguier’s attorney, Jay Woollacott, said his client has lost several million dollars in potential business deals and his reputation has been damaged as a result of the published article, which is available on the Internet and can come up in search engines.
The legal threat comes seven weeks after the jury’s verdict and three days after a subsequent settlement between Viguier and his business associates. Viguier and his lawyer now say they can’t comment on the settlement, citing a deal to keep details under wraps.
The threat came after a potential business partner who is described as a “prominent clothing manufacturer” allegedly saw the Daily Press report on the Internet and refused to do business with Viguier as a result. Woollacott, the lawyer, claims a potential deal had already been negotiated.
Viguier claims that the article damaged his reputation because it referred to the plaintiffs as partners in his company rather than business associates who were entitled to membership shares and because it didn’t fully explain the breakdown of the money said by the jury to be due to the two plaintiffs.
“The amount as against Mr. Viguier in the jury’s verdict was not $900,000, but at most $584,000,” Woollacott insisted.
The jury decided that Surf Channel and Viguier were both responsible for $600,000 in punitive damages and $284,000 for fraud and breach of contract, as the Dec. 27, 2003 article reported.
The story’s headline and first paragraph indicated Viguier was responsible for the entire amount. The original suit was brought against Viguier and Surf Channel by Keline Howard and Phillipe Ney. They claimed that they were promised ownership percentages in the company which they never received. Viguier argued that they were paid for work done.
Woollacott also differed with the newspaper’s reporting that the jury decided Viguier and Surf Channel “must pay” the plaintiffs. As a matter of procedure, only a judge can order a defendant to pay once a verdict has been rendered, the lawyer said.
Woollacott further argued that a settlement after the jury award expunged Viguier of liability. He demanded that the SMDP publish a correction, retract the article and remove it from the newspaper’s Web site, smdp.com. Until the threat to sue, no request for a published correction had been made.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 17, 2004. Read the original PDF.