Developer must pay Lennar $1 billion in extortion lawsuit
Capping a five-year defamation and extortion lawsuit, a state court jury in Florida has decided that San Diego developer Nicolas Marsch III and his Briarwood Capital should pay $1 billion in damages to Lennar Corp., a large Miami-based home builder.
The jury handed up its award Monday. Marsch, accusing Lennar of using its money and influence in Florida to engineer a sham trial, said in an email Thursday that he would appeal the verdict.
Marsch has contended that Lennar cheated him out of millions of dollars on a private Rancho Santa Fe golf community. In 2008, he hired Barry Minkow, a notorious Southern California con man turned fraud investigator, who backed his claims.
Lennar spent tens of millions of dollars in a counterattack, saying Minkow’s online broadsides alleging corporate fraud wrongly damaged its reputation and stock price.
In a statement this week, the home builder acknowledged that Marsch, who wound up in bankruptcy proceedings, can’t pay the damages. But it said: “The true value of the verdict is the validation of our integrity, credibility and transparency.”
The civil jury was convened only to determine damages. Circuit Court Judge Jose Rodriguez in Miami had entered a default judgment against Marsch last year. The judge cited “overwhelming” evidence that the developer improperly deleted email exchanges with Minkow that “go directly to the heart of this case and are incriminating.”
Minkow first landed in prison after ZZZZ Best, a San Fernando Valley carpet-cleaning firm he started as a teenager, defrauded investors in the 1980s.
In the Lennar case, he is serving a five-year federal prison term after pleading guilty to securities fraud, causing $583 million in damages to the company’s stock price.
Twitter: @ScottReckard
