Guess jeans

Guess Jeans has to pay $370 m damages to five ex-employees. Georges Marciano(62), co-founder of Guess wroungly accuses them of trying to hide money, sortes of wines and art. Georges was the founding designer of Guess Jeans, the company that introduced stonewashed jeans to the US, in 1982.

It will be one of the largest awards in US courts this year. Those five ex-employees will each get $69m in compensatory damages and $5m in punitive damages. This was the verdict of the Los Angeles County superior verdict.

In class we learned about those damages, this is also the reason why I could link this article to my blog.
I searched for the correct definition of compensatory damages and punitive damages in a dictionary. It says: punitive damages are damages intended to reform or deter the defendant and others from engaging in conduct similar to that which formed the basis of the lawsuit and compensatory damages, also called actual damages, are paid to compensate the claimant for loss, injury, or harm suffered by another's breach of duty.

In August 2007, Marciano sued the five ex-employees because he accused them of stealing a lot of personal information, stealing letters, conspiring to sell wine from his collection and commit one of the largest art thefts in US history, including some works from Roy Lichtenstein. Marciano claimed that the stolen things were worth $ 413 m.

The lawsuit was thrown out in December 2008, but when those ex-employees knew what Marciano was doing, they filed a kind of a cross-complaint against the co-founder of Guess.
The ex-employees found their reputation was ruined after Marciano started to sent complaints to agencies and other parties accusing them of theft and fraud.
During the procedure, Marciona was a real obstacle. He did not defend himself at the trial, he also repeatedly did't show up at despositions and he also sued the judge in federal court, alleging constitutional violations!
After the verdict, one of the employees told the Los Angeles Times that he felt vindicated.

source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/29/georges-marciano-guess-cour-defamation
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