John Daly Owes Big Money To Freeman

A couple of months ago, we mentioned that John Daly’s defamation case against Mike Freeman of CBSSports.com (and, previously, the Florida Times-Union) had been tossed out like an empty 20-ounce beer can from a golf cart with cigarette burns on the steering wheel. But there’s a new development. A judge ruled this week that Daly must pay Freeman and the Times-Union a whopping $271,763.99 for attorneys’ fees and costs. That’s a lot of Moon Pies. We haven’t seen the order, so we’re not sure why the court deviated from the general rule that each side should pay its own lawyer fees. It could be that the judge decided that Daly’s claims were frivolous. Regardless, justice was done in this case. We used to worry about being the target of a baseless claim from a millionaire who might like to shut us up by suing us. Now, we might need to revisit our policy on this point. After all, who can’t use an extra $271,763.99? UPDATE: Freeman has forwarded to us a copy of the order awarding fees and expenses. As it turns out, Freeman and the Times-Union made a formal settlement offer of $5,000 on April 14, 2008, which Daly rejected. Under Florida law, Daly’s failure to accept the offer and then his inability to recover more than that at trial required him to pay all post-offer attorneys’ fees and costs incurred by the defendant. Perhaps more amazing to us is the fact that the lawyers rang up $263,088 in fees from April 15, 2008 through the dismissal of the case in early 2009. So maybe I shouldn’t be quitting my day job.