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Jesse Ventura’s Libel Suit

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I get that question from a lot of people because they apparently missed the news that day the governor actually did do a press conference. But as you know, the case was reversed on appeal in front of the eighth circuit it was sent back for a new trial. And as we were preparing for the new trial, the publisher’s attorneys stepped in and tried to work out a settlement with us. And over a period of many months we finally worked out a deal that was satisfactory to the government and it was all settled confidentially.

Right, that was an overriding them throughout the trial is patriotism, America, Jesse Ventura is suing an American hero, he’s suing the widow of an American hero so we had to deal with that throughout the trial. And I’ll get to the answer to your question but as a matter of strategy, the first thing we did, which was very unorthodox is we put Chris Kyle’s wife, Taya Kyle on the stand. She was our very first witness, which you normally wouldn’t do in a case put an adverse witness on the stand. But we recognized they sympathy factor and the American hero factor and we had to deal with that and we had to get it in front of the jury and we did. My thought was from the deposition that Taya Kyle although she has a public image is on cross-examination going to be combative. She’s not going to answer my questions she’s going to argue with me and that’s exactly what happened. And I think within a matter of minutes the sympathy factor was out of the trial.

But getting to your question we also had a parade of Navy Seals who testified and these also are American heroes. Some of them showed up in uniform with the medals and we had to tread very carefully around that. You don’t call an American seal a liar, which is kind of the point of cross-examination sometimes. But we did tread lightly around that. We were respectful but we got across to the jury that there were so many inconsistent statements these people may not be lying but they’re certainly not telling you the facts as they happened.

Minneapolis, MN litigator David Olsen talks about working on Jesse Ventura’s case.

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