Jury sides with Lauderdale candidate

Article Courtesy of The Miami Herald

By Dan Christensen

Published October 24, 2007

A federal jury has awarded $790,000 to former Fort Lauderdale mayoral candidate Dan Lewis, who says his unsuccessful 2006 campaign was torpedoed by a political dirty trick.

The award to Lewis includes $657,000 in punitive damages and $105,000 in ''lost earnings'' -- the mayor's salary for the current three-year term.

Liable for those damages: Christopher James Peer, a candidate who, Lewis claims in court papers, ran a ''bogus'' campaign, with backing from Mayor Jim Naugle and well-known lobbyist and political consultant Judith Stern.

''People who want to use campaign lies and dirty tricks to get elected had better think twice,'' said Lewis, a political consultant and former Miramar city commissioner. ``The price of lying and cheating the voters out of a fair election just got pretty expensive.''

He said he has no plans to run for office again.

Peer, an Ocala stockbroker, declined to discuss Thursday's jury verdict or say whether he would appeal.

Naugle and Stern, who were not defendants, deny any involvement with Peer.

''I met Peer for the very first time the night of the election. I had no other contact with him, and I don't know him,'' Naugle said Monday.

''I never met Christopher Peer,'' Stern said. "I was too busy running other people's campaigns.''

NAUGLE REELECTED

Naugle, mayor since 1991, crushed Lewis in last year's Valentine's Day primary ballot, taking nearly 65 percent of the vote to win reelection outright. Peer finished a distant third with less than 500 votes citywide.

Before the vote, Lewis sued to have Peer barred from the race, claiming he wasn't eligible to run because he lived elsewhere. At the time, Lewis said Peer had been put up to run by Naugle supporters who wanted to force a primary vote, which they believed would benefit Naugle.

A judge dismissed the suit.

Peer responded by suing Lewis in federal court two weeks before the election. The suit claimed Lewis had unlawfully obtained a copy of Peer's credit report while searching for his address.

Lewis, 56, countersued shortly after the election, alleging that Peer's suit was an ''abuse of process'' made in ''bad faith for the purpose of harassment and to damage Lewis's reputation'' going into the election.

Federal Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres eventually tossed out Peer's suit.

But last week, after a four-day trial in Fort Lauderdale, a jury of five men and two women found that Peer had a ''specific intent to harm'' Lewis.

Colleen O'Loughlin, Lewis' attorney, argued that Peer's accusation may have cost Lewis the election.

The jury assessed $16,000 in damages for Lewis' campaign expenditures, $7,500 for his legal expenses and $5,000 for injury to his reputation.

What the trial didn't do was make clear what happened, or establish whether Naugle or anyone else put Peer up as a straw candidate.

TWO TESTIFY

Only Peer and Lewis testified at trial. Naugle was not called to testify.

Lewis unsuccessfully sought cellphone records from Peer, who represented himself. Those phone records would show ''Naugle, Stern and/or others'' coordinated with Peer, Lewis said in his court filings.

Peer's ''repeated failure'' to produce records sought by Lewis in advance of trial led Judge Torres to reject his defenses for liability out of court.

Lewis said he now plans to move aggressively to collect the jury's award. He hopes to use the effort to find out what happened.

''We'll go up the tree and see how high we get,'' he said.

Jury sides with Lauderdale candidate

who claimed `dirty tricks'