West Virginia (WOAY) A Beckley attorney and his legal team have secured a $9.25 million federal jury verdict against the New York Times Company.
An eight-person federal jury ruled in favor of Kai Spears on claims of defamation and false/ light invasion of privacy following a nine-day trial in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
The case centered on a 2023 New York Times article that reported Spears, then an 18-year-old freshman basketball player at the University of Alabama, was present at the scene of a deadly shooting.
Spears maintained he was not there.
His father, then Marshall University athletic director Christian Spears, contacted Beckley attorney Stephen P. New within an hour of the article’s publication.
The New York Times later corrected the report after Spears filed the suit.
After more than five hours of deliberation, the jury returned a total verdict of $9.25 million.
That includes $750,000 for defamation and $8.5 million for the false/light invasion of privacy claim, including $1 million in compensatory damages and $7.5 million in punitive damages.
The case remained pending for more than three years and involved extensive discovery and complex media-law questions.
According to the Associated Press, this is the first defamation lawsuit filed in the U.S. over a New York Times article that the company has lost in over 50 years.
