UPDATE: Libeled Law Profs. See West Damages Go South

Image via WikipediaU.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge John P. Fullam has slashed the $2.5 million punitive damages awarded both to Leonard Sosnov and David Rudovsky to $110,000 apiece from their libel suit against West Publishing Corp., according to a story in today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Last January, in Rudovsky & Sosnov v. West Pub. Corp. et al (Case No. 09-cv-00727-JF), Rudovsky, a civil rights lawyer and Senior Fellow at U. Penn law school, and Sosnov, who teaches at Widener law school, were each awarded $90,000 compensatory damages and $2.5 million punitive damages by a jury who found that West defamed the two men, who originally authored the legal publisher's Pennsylvania Criminal Procedure: Law, Commentary, and Forms (1991). [See "TUOL" post 1/20/11.]

Judge Fullam concluded the jury's punitive damages awarded far exceeded any damage to the plaintiffs' reputations and opined that the jury may have been overly influenced by the net worth of West, a legal publishing industry giant that produces law books, software, and legal forms books.

UPDATE: West Pub. Appeals $5m libel verdict

Image via WikipediaAttorneys for West Publishing are appealing a $5 million libel verdict awarded to two law professors last December by a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

In David Rudovsky & Leonard Sosnov v. West Publishing Corp. et al. (Case No. 09-cv-00727-JF), the plaintiffs, Rudovsky, of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Sosnov, of Widener University School of Law, each was awarded $90,000 in compensatory damages and $2.5 million  in punitive damages. The two professors co-authored West's Pennsylvania Criminal Procedure: Law, Commentary & Forms in 1987 and continued to provide yearly updates, or pocket parts, containing recent cases and revisions to the law, for roughly two decades before walking away from the project in a dispute over compensation and royalties.

West published a pocket part in 2008 that contained only three cases and omitted significant changes in the law, in a version that listed Rudovsky & Sosnov "and the publisher's staff" as the authors.  The plaintiffs sued for defamation and right of publicity invasion of privacy, among other claims, asserting that their reputations were tarnished in the academic community by being associated with the shoddy update. (See "TUOL" post 6/10/09.)