Jury Raises Award to Hudson’s Lover by $7.25 Million

A Los Angeles jury awarded Rock Hudson’s lover an additional $7.25 million in punitive damages Friday, but defense lawyers and experts predicted that Marc Christian is unlikely to ever receive much of the $21.75 million he won this week because he was not told that the screen star was dying of complications of AIDS.

“You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip,” said Robert Parker Mills, the attorney for Hudson’s estate, after the Superior Court panel ordered Hudson’s private secretary, Mark Miller, to pay Christian the additional damages.

A subdued Christian said the jury “sent a strong message that if you have AIDS, you have a duty to tell your lover.” He said he would donate part of the damages to AIDS charities “if I ever collect them.”

‘Despicable Conduct’

By a 10-2 vote, the jury awarded the $7.25 million to Christian to serve as an example and to punish Miller for his “despicable conduct” in helping Hudson hide his condition.

The defense, Mills said, will file motions next week requesting that the trial judge, Bruce R. Geernaert, overturn the judgment. If that fails, Mills continued, an appeal will be pursued, which could take three years to wend its way through the state’s higher courts.

Asserting that “the whole thing is a joke,” Mills added that neither Miller nor Hudson’s estate and insurance policies have sufficient funds to pay the judgment--if it comes to that.

Several jurors later explained their decision, with one saying that it was only “logical” and that Christian had gone through a “scary” period. Another juror said he doubts that conduct such as Hudson’s would be likely today, when there is more information about acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

“It’s a moral decision. Could you decide any different?” one juror asked as she hurried down the courthouse hallway.

Emotional Distress Damages

In what appears to be the first decision of its kind, the jury on Wednesday awarded Christian, who has shown no signs of contracting AIDS, damages for emotional distress after determining that Hudson and Miller had engaged in “outrageous conduct” by hiding Hudson’s illness. The exemplary damages, for “despicable conduct,” were assessed against Miller only because the law prevents such damages from being collected from the estate of a dead person. Hudson died in 1985.

After the verdict, Christian, who had remained mum because of a gag order during the trial, was mobbed by reporters as he stepped from the courtroom.

Looking more weary than exuberant, the blond self-described musicologist declared, “The jury has spoken, and I’m pleased. . . . If Rock Hudson had told me, none of us would be here today.”

Asked what he plans to do next, the Orange County-reared Christian, 35, replied, “I’m not going to meet any more movie stars.”

Christian, who met Hudson in 1983 while serving as a bartender at a political fund-raiser, added that he hopes to “get back into politics, which is my real love.” He would work, he said, as a campaign staffer rather than attempting to seek office himself.

During a five-week trial, Christian testified that as a result of Hudson’s and Miller’s lies, he continued to engage in high-risk sex with Hudson for eight months after a diagnosis showed that the Hollywood idol had AIDS. Christian, however, has continued to test negative for the virus that causes AIDS.

Legal experts monitoring the case agreed that the significance of the verdict lay in the fact that Christian has not contracted the disease.

Frank Schubert, president of the Assn. for California Tort Reform, said the case sets a poor precedent by “expanding the bounds of personal liability to infinite proportions.”

Verdict May Not Stand

“You can’t start compensating people for every fear, real or imagined, they might have,” Schubert said. “This establishes a liability that not even Donald Trump could afford.”

Schubert added that there is “a good chance” the verdict will not stand because “very high verdict awards are overturned with some degree of regularity when it is apparent to the appellate court that it is the result of passion and sympathy.”

George Tye, executive manager of the Assn. of California Insurance Companies, also criticized the outcome.

“It’s a terribly bad precedent to be awarding money for essentially no injuries,” Tye said. “This kind of theory is going to exacerbate the problems with the price and availability of liability insurance.”

Christian’s lawyer, Harold Rhoden, agreed Friday that “there’s no case like this in the records where damages were awarded to someone who didn’t get the disease but only has the fear of getting it. . . . Marc Christian doesn’t have a scratch on him. He didn’t even get a cold.”

Example to Others

But in hailing the judgment, Rhoden said the jury made a bold statement that could make future AIDS sufferers think twice before victimizing their lovers. “It is important that an example be made for the benefit of other people,” Rhoden said.

Rhoden, who had asked the jury earlier this week for an award of between $3 million and $10 million, revealed Friday that he had made a pretrial offer to Hudson’s insurance company to settle the case for $900,000.

After leaving the courtroom, the jurors refused to explain their rationale in arriving at the $21.75-million figure. Brushing past reporters, most of them said they would have no comment on the case.

In a phone interview later, juror Annie Espinoza of Los Angeles said that it was “only logical” that Christian would fear contracting AIDS because of his relationship with Hudson.

“How would you feel?” she asked. “There is no cure, (although) there might be one of these days. It’s scary.”

Juror James Daniely, 57, said he was swayed in Christian’s favor by Miller’s testimony.

“It seemed like the defendant (Miller) was obviously lying,” the Department of Water and Power employee said in a telephone interview. “He was lying about the concealment of the information he should have been giving to (Christian).”

Juror Dragica Grabovac, reached at home in Arcadia, said she was “just sorry we didn’t agree to a higher amount.”

“I feel that this is a message to the world,” she said. “Someone will think twice before they put someone’s life in danger. What he went through is worth lots and lots of money. It was not just the fear, he was also misled. . . . I felt one’s life is worth more than $20 million.”

‘Duty to Disclose’

Los Angeles postal worker Raymond H. Blanton, one of two jurors who dissented on the monetary award, said he believes that Christian instead deserved between $3 million and $10 million. Civil cases can be decided on a vote of at least nine jurors on a 12-member panel.

“I felt there was a duty to disclose,” said Blanton, 27. “(But) as far as the intent, I couldn’t get anything from the evidence that would really convince me.”

Blanton said that if Christian and Hudson had met this year instead of in 1983, when there was less public knowledge about AIDS, the case may have been resolved in a different fashion.

“I don’t think you can base a lot of our decision . . . as far as today,” Blanton said. “It would be very hard in this day and age for a homosexual male, or basically almost anyone who has access to public media, not to be aware there is that danger out there.”

The trial provided many details about the private life of one of Hollywood’s leading male actors. Christian testified that he fell in love with Hudson after many platonic meetings and lived in the actor’s Beverly Hills home for almost two years. When Hudson began falling ill, he told Christian he was losing weight for a new role. Later, he reportedly told Miller: “Take care of the kid. I may have killed him.”

Mills said that if the judgment stands, “there is a distinct possibility” that Hudson’s entire estate would eventually be turned over to Christian.

Probate attorney Earl Bender said the estate, valued at less than $6 million, lists Hudson’s ultimate beneficiaries as the Motion Picture and TV Country Home and Hospital in Woodland Hills, the Braille Institute and USC.

Loan for Research

Shortly before his death, Hudson was also credited with providing $250,000 for the creation of AmFAR (American Foundation for AIDS Research), the nation’s largest private funding source for AIDS research and education.

However, the seed money, described at the time as a gift, was actually a short-term loan that was later repaid to Hudson’s estate, an AmFAR spokesman said this week.

On Friday, Christian said he would contribute “the punitive damages, if I ever collect them . . . to AIDS groups.” But Mills called that a “meaningless gesture,” because Miller, who testified that his net assets are less than $100,000, could never pay the $7.25-million judgment.

Mills added that the jury’s action could eventually come back to haunt Christian “if people come out of the woodwork and say he had sex with them and that they now have fear.”

Staff writers Carol McGraw and Kenneth J. Garcia assisted in the preparation of this story.