Disney To Pay $240 Million
The Walt Disney Co. stole ideas for a sports complex from two businessmen and should pay $240 million in damages, a six-member jury ruled Friday.
Nicholas Stracick, Edward Russell and their company, All Pro Sports Camps Inc., accused Disney of fraud, theft of trade secrets, breaking an implied contract and breaching a confidential relationship.
"It says to America that small companies can get justice," Johnnie Cochran Jr., an attorney for the plaintiffs, said afterward. "They had the idea, and you can't take someone's ideas in America, and that's what this company did."
Stracick—a former baseball umpire from Buffalo, N.Y.—and Russell— a Fonthill, Ontario architect—said they pitched their idea for a sports complex to Disney in 1987.
Four years after Disney officials rejected their plans in 1989, the company announced it would build a $100 million complex. Disney opened it in 1997.
Disney executives denied using anybody else's ideas for the Wide World of Sports complex, the spring training home of the Atlanta Braves, at Walt Disney World.
"Disney is an honorable company," Louis Meisinger, the company's general counsel said Wednesday outside court. "We don't steal other people's ideas."
Meisinger said the company would appeal, challenging what he said were prejudicial statements in closing arguments and improper evidence.
"We're not knocked out," he said. "The notion that we had to steal this idea is utterly preposterous. This verdict will not stand. This is an aberrational verdict and a one-time thing."
Disney said the sports park was created by its own in-house designers. They said it was similar to many existing sports centers and Olympic training centers and that no one company could claim ownership of the idea to build sports complexes.
The judge severely limited the scope of what jurors could consider by adopting jury instructions that said the architecture, site plan and business plan for the sports complex were not copied from All Pro and could not be considered.
All Pro claimed 88 similarities between its plans and the Disney complex and documented more than 200 telephone calls with Disney executives.
The plaintiffs accused Disney of fraud, theft of trade secrets, breaking an implied contract and breaching a confidential relationship. The six-member Orange County Civil Court jury accepted all the claims except fraud.
Florida law requires that a verdict be unanimous in cases with juries of six.
The jury decided Disney's conduct was willful and malicious, which allows the trial judge to double the award at a hearing to be set later.