Money for the Post

"I feel like a champ," said onetime University of Georgia Football Coach Wally Butts, after an Atlanta jury awarded him $3,060,000. He had reason: it was one of the biggest libel judgments in U.S. legal history (TIME, Aug. 30). Last week in Atlanta, the same federal district judge who presided over Butts's suit against the Saturday Evening Post pared the judgment to something less than championship size. Holding that the original award was "grossly excessive," Judge Lewis R. Morgan ordered it reduced to $460,000.

Judge Morgan's action did not affect the jury's verdict against the Post, which in an article last spring had accused Butts and University of Alabama Football Coach "Bear" Bryant of conspiring to fix the 1962 Georgia-Alabama game. Indeed, the judge went out of his way to commend that verdict. "The article was clearly defamatory and extremely so," he said. "The jury was warranted in concluding from the persistent and continuing attitude of the officers and agents of the defendant that there was a wanton or reckless indifference to the plaintiff's rights." But if Butts refused to accept the reduction in judgment, said Judge Morgan, the court had no choice except to grant the Post a new trial.

Faced with this alternative, Wally Butts decided to take the $460,000. For obvious reasons, though, the Post went ahead with its plans to appeal the verdict. Waiting his turn in court next month is Alabama's Bryant--who has filed suit for $10 million in damages arising from the same Post article.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.