Maris Family Wins Lawsuit

A jury Friday ordered Anheuser-Busch to pay $50 million to the family of late baseball great Roger Maris for improperly taking away a beer distributorship.

Attorneys for the Maris family said jurors meant to award the family $139 million, but were confused by the judge’s instructions. Both sides planned to appeal.

The jurors were told to consider only the market value of the distributorship and not lost sales figures, which the jurors estimated at $89.7 million.

The world’s largest brewer took away the distributorship in 1997, prompting a $300-million breach-of-contract lawsuit from the family.

Anheuser-Busch said it terminated the contract because of what it termed as Maris Distributing’s fraudulent conduct of repackaging outdated beer and falsifying records to make it look as if they were visiting customers when they weren’t.

Anheuser-Busch’s $8.6-million countersuit was denied by the jury.