A federal jury ruled that Bob Marley's widow wasn't responsible for helping siphon more than $20 million from the reggae star's estate, but jurors did find that a lawyer and an accountant committed fraud.
"It was unbelievable," Rita Marley said after the ruling Monday. "I'm very happy, very proud."The jury ordered the lawyer and accountant to pay the estate just over $2 million in damages. The civil racketeering lawsuit filed by estate administrator J. Reid Bingham had sought at least $14 million plus damages.
Marley left plenty of music, including such hits as "I Shot the Sheriff" and "War" when he died of cancer in 1981. But he left no will, causing a legal fight that has cost the estate millions of dollars.
When he died, the Jamaican star with dreadlocks and Rastafarian beliefs had an estate worth about $30 million. Besides four children he fathered with Rita Marley, he had seven other children.
Ten percent of the estate went to Rita Marley and 90 percent went to his 11 children, in accordance with Jamaican law.
The lawsuit accused Rita Marley, accountant Marvin Zolt of New York and lawyer David J. Stein-berg of Bala Cynwyd, Pa., of backdating documents and forging Marley's signature to remove assets from the estate.
The jury found that Zolt and Steinberg violated federal racketeering laws, defrauded the estate, were negligent and tried to conceal their wrongful acts from the estate. But it found them not guilty of many other charges.