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Disney loses $240M suit
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August 11, 2000: 6:21 p.m. ET
Jury decides company stole plans for Wide World of Sports complex
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - A Florida circuit court jury on Friday ordered Walt Disney Co. to pay $240 million to two men who claimed entertainment conglomerate stole their idea for the Wide World of Sports complex, used by the Atlanta Braves baseball team for spring training.
The Orlando, Fla., jury found that Disney (DIS: Research, Estimates) willfully and maliciously misappropriated the plaintiffs' "trade secrets." The award was significantly less than the $1.4 billion the plaintiffs had asked for. But trial judge George Sprinkle IV has the discretion of increasing the damages.
 Nicholas Stracick and Edward Russell, the two entrepreneurs behind All Pro Sports Camp, maintained that Disney pilfered their design for its Wide World of Sports park, a 200-acre property that opened at Orlando's Walt Disney World resort in Orlando in 1997.
During the trial, which began July 10, Stracick and Russell accused Burbank, Calif.-based Disney of fraud, theft of trade secrets, breaking an implied contract and breaching a confidential relationship. The six-member jury, which deliberated for 12 hours, accepted all the claims except fraud.
"(The decision) says to America that small companies can get justice," said attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr., a member of O.J. Simpson's famed defense team, who represented the plaintiffs. "They had the idea, and you can't take someone's idea in America, and that's what this company did."
"We worked our butts off," Stracick said. "Disney took advantage of it and ran with it."
All Pro claimed 88 similarities between its plans and the Disney complex. But Disney's attorneys said in-house designers planned the park, and argued that the park is essentially similar to existing sports centers and other Olympic training centers.
"The Walt Disney Company doesn't need to borrow anybody else's ideas," Lou Meisinger, general counsel for Disney, told CNNfn.com. "It has its own good ideas."
 He also took issue with the manner with which the plaintiff's lawyers appealed to the jury's perceived biases against Disney, a $25 billion company that operates theme parks around the globe, and is one of world's most recognizable corporate names.
"They played the David-versus-Goliath card about as well and persistently as anything I've ever seen," he added.
Meisinger told CNNfn.com that the company would next file a motion to have the decision set aside, citing a miscarriage of justice. If denied, the company will 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."
Two sides met first in 1987
Judge Sprinkle 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.
Stracick, a retired baseball umpire from Buffalo, N.Y., and Russell, an architect from Fonthill, Ontario, testified they pitched their idea for a sports complex to Disney officials in the late 1980s.
Four years after Disney officials rejected their plans in 1989, the company announced it would build a $100 million complex.
"There were some meeting with them in 1987 in which there were some discussion about sports camps," Meisinger said. "Then many, many years later, Disney independently conceived of the idea for the Wide World of Sports Complex."
Jimmy Johnson Jr., a dismissed alternate juror, said he would have decided against Disney and awarded the full request of $1.4 billion in damages to teach the entertainment giant a lesson.
Johnson questioned the testimony of Disney executives, particularly architect Wing Chao, who claimed they knew nothing of Stracick and Russell's plans. Johnson said Disney Chairman and CEO Michael Eisner appeared evasive in his videotaped deposition played in the five-week trial.
"I found most of the Disney executives to be less than forthcoming," Johnson said. 
-- from staff and wire reports
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