An Alabama judge has dismissed a jury’s $5-million award to a University of Alabama booster, who had prevailed in a defamation lawsuit against the NCAA last November, The Huntsville Times reported today.
Judge William Gordon, of the Montgomery County Circuit Court, ruled that the jury’s verdict was “the product of passion or prejudice.” He also said that an infractions announcement by the NCAA in 2002 — the impetus for the lawsuit — did not meet the standards for constitutional malice.
The booster, Ray Keller, asserted in his lawsuit that the NCAA’s announcement, which used powerful language to describe him and two other boosters, represented defamation. In the announcement, the NCAA did not identify Mr. Keller by name, but subsequent news reports did.
A new trial date has not yet been set. —Hurley Goodall