The $1.8 million defamation verdict a jury awarded Jesse Ventura last year should not be overturned, his attorney told the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, in answer to an appeal brought by the estate of "American Sniper" author Chris Kyle.
Despite the outcry from media organizations that denounced the verdict, this is not a classic First Amendment case where a media defendant relayed important public information obtained from a third party, Ventura's attorney David Olsen argued in a brief.
Rather, it's a case of an author, the late Chris Kyle, who published a first-person account of punching a "celebrity" he later identified as Ventura.
Olsen wrote that it was a lie and that Kyle knowingly fabricated the story.
Kyle's account went viral within a few days of the book's publication, and to the top of the New York Times bestseller lists, Olsen said, after Kyle named the former Minnesota governor in media interviews as the man he decked at a California bar.
Kyle claimed Ventura made derogatory remarks about the war in Iraq, President George W. Bush and the Navy SEALs.
In urging that it not be overturned, Olsen wrote, "Appellate courts view the evidence in the light most favorable to a jury's verdict and will not set it aside unless there is a complete absence of probative facts to support it.
"Based on eyewitness testimony, photographs and other documents, the jury found that Kyle's firsthand account of the alleged incident was materially false and was published with actual malice," he wrote.
