Jury: Stewart must return cash to Rio

Ken Ritter

Thursday, Sept. 8, 2005 | 9:39 a.m.

A federal jury decided Wednesday that rock star Rod Stewart should pay the Rio $2 million plus interest for a canceled show in December 2000.

The seven-member jury found unanimously that Stewart should not have kept an advance he was paid for the New Year's weekend show that he said he was unable to perform at the Rio because of throat surgery several months earlier.

Stewart, 60, was not in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas when the verdict was reached.

One of his lawyers, Kerry Garvis Wright, said outside court that the rock star will appeal.

"It's the wrong result," she said.

Steve Morris, a lawyer for the Las Vegas casino and its parent company, Harrah's Entertainment, said he was "delighted and relieved" by the unanimous verdict in a case dating back almost 5 years.

"As the verdict shows, there wasn't any reason for this lawsuit other than the refusal of Mr. Stewart to perform," Morris said.

Jury foreman Stevan Jorgensen, 56, said the case boiled down to a misunderstanding of the contract between the British rocker and the casino.

"We felt it was only fair," he said, "that if Mr. Stewart didn't perform the concert that he should give the money back."

Juror Kent Brooks, 62, said jurors felt Stewart would not have been able to perform "up to his standards" following surgery in May 2000.

"The best conclusion that was fair to both parties was that it was a misunderstanding of the contract," Brooks said.

The jury of four men and three women deliberated about three hours Wednesday after nearly two weeks of testimony in the civil breach-of-contract lawsuit.

Jorgensen, a hospital pharmacy director, and Brooks, a nuclear test readiness officer with Bechtel Nevada in Las Vegas, said outside court that they thought Stewart would have performed a makeup concert if Harrah's asked.

But they recalled Harrah's Chief Executive Gary Loveman's testimony that the casino giant felt forced into signing Stewart for the December 2000 New Year's Eve weekend show before Stewart would perform a New Year's show in December 1999.

"He came out and said, 'We made a bad deal,' " Jorgensen said.

The two jurors also recalled Stewart testifying that he wanted to perform a makeup show after December 2000, but left it up to his managers and lawyers to negotiate his appearances.

"He essentially said, 'I do what they say,' " Brooks said.

Stewart was paid $2 million in advance in January 2000 for the December 2000 show.

He and his doctors testified he was later diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and had two tumors surgically removed in May 2000. One was cancerous, one was benign.

Stewart said he didn't fully recover his trademark raspy voice in time for the Las Vegas show.

He did recover in time to begin a world concert tour in June 2001, and estimated he has performed 150 shows since. But he said Harrah's would not let him reschedule the December 2000 show.

Loveman testified that a makeup show on any other date could not provide the same monetary benefit to the casino as a show on the three-day New Year's 2000 weekend, which celebrated the millennium.

The interest on the $2 million was not determined, although Morris said Harrah's would ask Judge Larry Hicks to put the figure at about $1 million.

Jorgensen and Brooks faulted both sides for the contract, and said they didn't think Harrah's should be entitled to attorney fees as the prevailing party in the case.

"Both sides should pay their own attorney fees," Brooks said.

Stewart's lead lawyer, Louis "Skip" Miller, criticized the jury for siding with Harrah's lawyers, who he said suggested late in the trial that the contract was invalid.

"We have a signed written contract," Miller said by telephone from Los Angeles. "Both sides signed on the dotted line. This decision is going to get reversed on appeal, in my opinion."

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