Jack Nicklaus has been awarded $50 million in his defamation lawsuit against the Nicklaus Companies, which is named after the legendary golfer but owned by billionaire banker Howard Milstein.
A six-person jury in Palm Beach County, Fla., ruled in favor of Nicklaus, 85, on Monday, finding that the Nicklaus Companies actively participated in the false publishing of facts that damaged the golfer’s reputation and exposed him to “ridicule, hatred, mistrust, distrust or contempt,” according to The Palm Beach Post.
The Nicklaus Companies, which owns the golfer’s IP rights, sued Nicklaus in 2022 after he began offering golf course design services following the expiration of a five-year non-compete clause. Nicklaus sold his IP rights to Milstein in 2007 for $145 million in a deal that launched Nicklaus Companies, which oversees the golfer’s clothing brand, golf course designs, and other businesses. He largely stopped working with the company in 2017.
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Nicklaus then countersued the Nicklaus Companies in 2023, alleging that Milstein and Nicklaus Companies executive Andrew O’Brien spread false stories that he secretly negotiated a $750 million deal to lead LIV Golf. Nicklaus’s lawyer, Eugene Stearns, said in his closing statements to the jury, “What they wanted to create in the minds of the public is Jack Nicklaus is an old guy who sold out to the Saudis,” per the Palm Beach Post.
While the jury ruled in favor of Nicklaus against the company at large, the jury ruled in favor of Milstein and O’Brien as it relates to Nicklaus’s claims against them individually, so those two men will not have to personally pay any damages.
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