Jury Awards Klein $5 Million in Feud With Raiders’ Davis

In a bizarre climax to an extraordinary trial, a San Diego jury Wednesday awarded former San Diego Chargers owner Eugene Klein more than $5 million in his lawsuit accusing Los Angeles Raiders managing general partner Al Davis of malicious prosecution.

Lawyers for the Raiders termed the verdict “stupefying” and immediately pledged that they will seek to have it overturned. But if the verdict is allowed to stand, the trial will have proved the costliest episode--for Davis, at least--in the bitter relationship between two of professional sports’ most colorful businessmen.

Klein, who sold the Chargers in 1984, claimed that Davis had maliciously singled him out as a defendant in the Raiders’ 1981 antitrust lawsuit against the National Football League. Klein suffered a heart attack on the witness stand during the trial of the suit in May, 1982.

The Raiders won that case, gaining the right to move from Oakland to Los Angeles for the 1982 season. But a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the Raiders had no grounds for naming Klein, Los Angeles Rams owner Georgia Frontiere or NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle as individual defendants in the case. Frontiere and Rozelle have not sued.

After a celebrity-studded, eight-week trial, a San Diego Superior Court jury agreed that Davis had maliciously named Klein in the suit. The jurors unanimously rejected arguments by Davis’ attorneys that the Raider chief simply had followed his lawyers’ advice in making Klein a defendant in the antitrust case--and that Klein, in any event, was a ringleader among NFL owners trying to destroy the Raiders franchise.

Klein, a millionaire businessman who left football in part because of the heart attack, said Wednesday that he hoped the verdict would teach a lesson to anyone inclined to misuse the courts.

“The jury was absolutely correct,” he said. “They sent a message to Mr. Davis and to all the people like that--that before you sue someone, you’ve got to have a pretty good reason.”

Davis--who attended most of the trial but, like Klein, was not present when the jury returned its verdict--could not be reached for comment.

In a statement issued by the Raiders office in El Segundo, the club said:

“Today’s decision is astonishing. The case had absolutely no merit at all, but someone did a real selling job on the jury. While we’re shocked at this decision, and there’s no question that it’s a tremendous setback, there is still a long road ahead.”

Klein’s words were mild compared to some of the salvos he has fired at Davis through the years. While their teams conducted a fierce rivalry on the field, Klein and Davis were battling in court and at NFL meetings in what Klein this week called “the most-publicized feud in football.”

In a 1980 deposition, Davis said their animosity was “mutual--and I probably started it.” After the Raiders beat the Chargers in the 1981 AFC championship game, Klein called Davis “a sick man.”

On Wednesday, after barely more than a day of deliberations, the San Diego jury awarded Klein $5,048,606--his medical expenses since his heart attack plus $5 million. Klein said that, after paying his legal expenses, he would contribute the remainder of the jury award to hospitals and charities for heart research.

“Not a quarter will go to my pocket,” he said. “This was not a question of doing it for the money. This was a question of principle.”

The very public way Klein chose, initially, to make that promise could prove the undoing of his victory, however.

During their morning deliberations, the jurors sent a note to Superior Court Judge Gilbert Harelson asking if they could award Klein an amount in excess of his medical bills on the condition that he donate the money to charity.

Harelson told the jurors they couldn’t. But around noon, Klein turned up on a radio talk show with former San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock, and issued his vow that “every penny” the jury gave him would go to heart research.

Klein said later that he had called up Hedgecock’s producer at KSDO-AM radio to clarify details of a scheduled appearance Monday to discuss his new book, “First Down and a Billion.”

When Hedgecock’s producer asked how the trial was going, Klein said, he told him about the jury’s question. At that point, Klein said, KSDO decided to put him on the air.

After the verdict, Raiders attorney Jeff Berren said Klein’s broadcast comments could be grounds for seeking a mistrial.

“You’re not supposed to communicate with a jury,” Berren said. “I would never even dream of something like that.”

Berren, admittedly aghast at the jury’s verdict, said the interview was typical of the tactics the NFL has used in what the Raiders consider a campaign to isolate Davis and his maverick ballclub.

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “I know how the NFL operates in that respect. They never missed a trick yet, and I don’t expect they would at this point.”

Klein said the suggestion that he was trying to manipulate the jury’s deliberations was groundless. “The jury was in the jury room,” he said.

Davis’ lawyers could initiate a challenge to the verdict as early as this morning, when Harelson has ordered both sides to return to court. At that time, Klein and his lawyers will announce if they want the jury to hear further testimony on the issue of imposing a punitive damage award atop the verdict already levied against Davis.

Berren was fuming Wednesday, complaining that Harelson’s rulings had allowed Klein’s lawyers to paint an unfavorable portrait of Davis for the jury while barring testimony about Klein’s history of litigiousness and his run-ins with the NFL and various business regulatory bodies.

“To blame someone else for causing a heart attack, with his entire background . . . ,” Berren said, shaking his head. He found the amount of the verdict puzzling, too, given that Klein’s lawyers had asked in their closing arguments only for the medical expenses and perhaps $1 for “pain and suffering.”

“I don’t know where (the jurors) got it, if they pulled it off the ceiling or what,” Berren said. “It’s just stupefying to think of.”

Davis and his legal team can object all they want, Klein said. All he knows is that he won.

“The proof of the pudding is that Al Davis is guilty of malicious prosecution,” Klein said. “His lawyers can take all the cheap shots they want, and I can’t even give them a 15-yard penalty.”