Reporting on $84.5 million in damages - is it enough - here (source of the headline quote), here (with a fine photo and caption), and here, telling it like it is:
Zygmunt “Zygi” Wilf, principal owner of the Minnesota Vikings, and two relatives must pay Ada Reichmann of Toronto a total of $51.8 million, including $12.6 million in compensatory damages, $20.4 million in punitive damages and $18.8 million in interest.
The Wilfs must also pay $32.7 million to Reichmann’s brother, Josef Halpern of Brooklyn, the longtime former on-site manager at the Rachel Gardens complex, including $6.5 million in compensatory damages, $16.4 million in punitive damages and $9.8 million in interest.
Judge Deanne Wilson had ruled on Aug. 5 that the Wilfs systematically cheated their partners by not giving them their fair share of revenues from the 764-unit complex.
She ruled the Wilfs committed fraud, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty by such practices as charging the partnership unauthorized management fees and interest payments.
It is unclear why other reporting did not go into the fact that punitive damages substantially exceeded actual damages; i.e., that the Wilfs were hammered to a thin layer of pulp, via punishment damages, for their degree of willful harm inflicted on those trusting souls who entered into business dealings with the Wilfs.
Is there a lesson, for Minnesotans with a learning curve?
Our Wilfs. Purple pride. Our legislature and our governor, letting them have their way.
Minnesota Nice can be carried far when meeting New Jersey snatch and grab.
Those loveable rascals plucked their partners, while never resorting to handguns or violence.
Aren't they something special?
____________UPDATE____________
That lawyer quote in the headline, "egregious" is old hat legal jargon. But we face a new dawn in legalese, now. Instead of the shopworn phrase, "willful fraud," we can say, "Wilfal fraud" meaning doing a fraud as if doing it as a Wilf, which in essence boils down to be the same meaning as the older term, while being a neat trick on words.