Insurance salesman Gary Sheets has settled his libel suit against a tabloid writer who reported in The Globe that Sheets bilked the Osmond family out of millions of dollars.
The expected settlement came in the wake of a ruling that would have limited the amount of money Sheets would likely have received had he won the case.Sheets had sued The Globe and writer Laura Deni for $2 million. U.S. District Judge Bruce Jenkins dismissed the suit this week after the confidential settlement was reached.
Jenkins ruled in June that Sheets could not tell a jury that The Globe had agreed to pay any damages a jury assessed Deni.
Without that information, a jury would likely assume Deni had to pay any damages with her own money and award Sheets a paltry sum, Sheets' attorney had argued.
Randy Dryer, attorney for The Globe, told Jenkins that withholding news of the agreement from the jury would make Sheets more likely to settle the case.
Sheets sued after The Globe ran an article in April 1989 headlined "Broke and Bitter, Marie Osmond sobs: WE LOST MILLIONS." The article said Sheets faced 37 counts of fraud, even though Sheets had been acquitted on all counts a week earlier.
Jenkins dismissed The Globe as a defendant in the suit last fall.
Meanwhile, Sheets will have to wait before collecting the $650,000 a federal jury awarded him this spring for Salt Lake County's violation of Sheet's privacy.
A jury concluded that county investigator Michael George invaded Sheets' privacy when he gave excerpts of Kathy Sheets' diary to an author. Kathy Sheets, Gary Sheets' wife, was killed in 1985 when she picked up a package bomb intended for her husband. The bomb had been placed in the couple's front yard by Mark Hofmann, who is serving a life sentence in Utah State Prison.
The county appealed the jury decision to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals last week, said County Attorney David Yocom. Each side will file briefs in the matter, then argue before the court several months later.