ST. LOUIS — A jury on Friday awarded $875,000 in damages to a vendor for a defunct St. Louis musical competition after organizers accused him of sabotage.
Howard “Chip” Self, the proprietor of Valley Park-based Logic Methods Sound and Lighting, withdrew from the out of doors music competition LouFest in the summertime of 2018. LouFest sued him in 2019. He countersued later that yr.
“It’s only a reduction to not have this hanging over my head anymore,” Self mentioned Friday.
LouFest, the Forest Park music competition, began in 2010. However in September 2018, simply days earlier than it was set to start, some sponsors and distributors, together with Logic Methods, pulled out and organizers canceled the occasion.
In early 2019, competition organizers filed a lawsuit accusing Self and his firm of sabotaging the occasion by exaggerating LouFest’s monetary issues in feedback to the press. Self’s final purpose, the lawsuit claimed, was to start out his personal competition. Self’s legal professionals argued there was no proof of such a plot.
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LouFest dismissed the lawsuit three months later, and in November 2019, Logic Methods filed its personal go well with in opposition to LouFest and its producer, Pay attention Reside Leisure, plus organizer Michael Van Hee, for defamation and malicious prosecution. That go well with argued LouFest’s preliminary lawsuit had broken the status Self had constructed over 30 years within the lighting and sound enterprise.
In trial this week, legal professional Thomas Magee argued Logic Methods and Self had doubtlessly misplaced main enterprise as a result of a easy on-line search would flip up articles about LouFest’s preliminary lawsuit.
“The entire thing was bunk,” Magee mentioned in closing arguments.
However Michael Griffith, the legal professional representing LouFest, mentioned Self’s feedback to the Publish-Dispatch days earlier than the competition have been the turning level that led to its demise.
“In case you don’t have sound, in case you don’t have lights, you don’t have a competition,” Griffith mentioned in courtroom. “(Self) didn’t have to talk to the press. He might’ve simply walked away and never executed the job.”
Magee mentioned Self was not the one individual complaining about not getting paid and was getting unfairly punished for an issue he didn’t create.
“You may’t sue someone for telling the reality,” Magee mentioned.
Magee requested the jury to award $2 million to Logic Methods and $2 million to Self in damages.
After roughly 4 hours of deliberation, the jury awarded $800,000 to Logic Methods and $75,000 to Self.
Magee referred to as the decision “vindication.”
“An important factor was a jury saying Logic Methods didn’t do something incorrect and Logic Methods wasn’t a part of an enormous conspiracy to take over LouFest,” he mentioned.