Appeal of Milestone Damages Case Fails : Law: State justices let stand an $11.1-million punitive judgment against a San Joaquin Valley agribusiness giant for unwarranted libel suit.

The state Supreme Court on Thursday let stand a milestone $11.1-million malicious-prosecution award against a San Joaquin Valley agribusiness giant for bringing an unwarranted libel suit against three local farmers.

The award was the largest of its kind in a counteraction against a type of suit allegedly designed to stifle political opposition. Such a suit is known by critics as a SLAPP, or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.

In a brief order, the high court refused to review a ruling by a state Court of Appeal in Fresno last June upholding an unusually large punitive damage award against the J.G. Boswell Co., owner of a 200,000-acre farming and development enterprise in Fresno, Kern and Kings counties. Only Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas voted to hear an appeal by Boswell.

Thursday’s action drew praise from Ralph B. Wegis of Bakersfield, lawyer for the three farmers. “It’s heartening to see the system work, with the result being that Boswell is at last accountable for the damage it has done to the political system and people’s right of free speech,” said Wegis.

Attorneys for Boswell could not immediately be reached for comment.

Thursday’s order climaxed a nine-year legal battle against the firm by three local growers--Ken Wegis, Jack Thomson and his son, Jeff Thomson.

In 1982, the three bought newspaper ads accusing Boswell of opposing the proposed Peripheral Canal in order to gain a monopoly on cotton farming. The canal would have brought additional water to the area.

Boswell filed a libel suit against the three farmers. It later was thrown out of court.The three growers countered with a malicious-prosecution suit, charging that Boswell had filed a baseless suit simply to intimidate critics and silence political opposition.

In 1988, a Kern County Superior Court jury found that Boswell lacked an adequate legal basis for its libel suit and awarded the farmers $10.5 million in punitive damages, along with $3 million in general damages that was later reduced to $600,000.

After the appeal court upheld the verdict, lawyers for Boswell sought review by the state Supreme Court, contending that the jury was biased against the firm and the award was “grossly disproportionate.”

If such verdicts were allowed to stand, the company said, litigants with justifiable claims such as Boswell’s would be unfairly discouraged from bringing libel suits for fear of being targeted with costly countersuits.

In another action, the state Supreme Court, widening the ban on juror discrimination, left intact an appeal court ruling barring the systematic exclusion of women from civil juries because of their sex.

The justices, in a brief order, declined to review a decision last July by a state Court of Appeal in Los Angeles. That decision held that the law prohibits sex bias in civil jury selection, just as it has barred such discrimination based on race. The high court’s action makes the appellate ruling binding on trial courts throughout the state.

The appeal court ruling came in a case involving a financial dispute between a Los Angeles woman, Adrienne Di Donato, and her former husband, Steven H. Santini.

The husband’s attorney used his first six peremptory challenges--for which no reason needbe stated--to excuse prospective women jurors, five of whom had been divorced. Eventually, four women served on the jury, which ruled 10 to 2 for the husband. The appeal panel, however, ordered a retrial, holding that the husband’s attorney should have been required to show that his rejection of the women jurors was not based on bias against women as a group.