USA: After 8 years of court battle Anheuser-Busch has to pay $120M to Maris family

The family of former home run champion Roger Maris will get at least $120 million from Anheuser-Busch as part of a settlement that ended a defamation trial and other litigation, Associated Press communicated on August 24.

Maris' relatives accused the St. Louis-based company of defamation after the officials of the company said publicly the family's distributorship was deficient and sold repackaged, out-of-date beer. The family claimed in court that the brewer plotted to destroy their reputation as a part of a larger scheme to seize the best-performing distributors for Busch family relatives and friends. Anheuser-Busch denied the allegation.

The legal contest between Anheuser-Busch Cos Inc. and the Maris family had consumed eight years, three trials and millions of dollars in legal fees. The company had given Roger Maris and his brother, Rudy, the distributorship after the slugger ended his career in 1968 with the St. Louis Cardinals, which it then owned.

Roger Maris, who died in 1985, held the single-season home run record for 37 years after he hit 61 in 1961 for the New York Yankees. He was traded to the Cardinals after the 1966 season, helping St. Louis to the 1967 World Series title.

The Marises had won a $50 million jury award against the nation's largest brewer in 2001 for ending their beer distributorship contract in 1997. That award had been tied up on appeal.Anheuser-Busch spokesman Rick Oleshak said he couldn't comment. But a spokesman for the Maris family's attorneys said the actual settlement was higher than $120 million.

"That is only part of the settlement," said Tom McNicholas. "It's nowhere near the totality of the agreement between the Maris family and Anheuser-Busch."

The agreement was announced on August 23 as a jury in Gainesville, Fla., reached a verdict in the three-week trial after two days of deliberations. The verdict was sealed, but jurors later said they had decided to award the Maris family compensatory damages but not punitive damages.

The three jurors reached by The Associated Press refused to say the amount of the compensatory damages.

Both sides haven�t disclosed the terms of the settlement August 23, but the Maris family had been seeking $250 million in compensatory damages and up to $5 billion in damages of punitive