Jurors on Friday dismissed an Indiana woman's claims that former Salt Lake Buzz owner Joe Buzas sexually harassed her during interviews for a job with the minor league baseball team.
After only about two hours of deliberation, jurors returned the verdict and awarded 29-year-old Heather Alwine nothing. She had asked for at least $1.6 million from Buzas and the Buzz organization.
Alwine accused Buzas of repeatedly fondling her and making sexual comments when she applied for a job with the Buzz in 1997. Alwine, of Fort Wayne, Ind., claims she was never hired because she rejected Buzas' advances.
The verdict shocked Alwine's attorney, Mary Anne Wood, who believed she put on a strong case during the weeklong trial.
"I'm stunned by it," Wood said. "If this isn't sexual harassment, I don't know what is."
Buzas' daughter, Hilary Drammis, praised the verdict as total vindication for her father.
"I think it shows he didn't do anything wrong; we didn't do anything wrong," said Drammis, who now runs the Salt Lake Stingers.
Buzas, 84, is terminally ill and appeared only briefly in U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell's courtroom. He did not testify.
Buzas was recovering from out-patient surgery when the verdict was returned Friday, but Drammis said her father will be pleased.
"I'm sure when I tell him he's just going to be glad that jurors found nothing wrong with what he did," she said. "The jury was right. They found the right answer, thank God."
During Friday's closing arguments, Wood said Buzas' history of offering employment in exchange for sex was no secret to those in the Buzz organization.
"The Salt Lake Buzz had a problem for five years," she said. "A problem that they knew about and ignored, and that problem was Joe Buzas."
Alwine testified that Buzas' signature move was to come up behind her and knock his knees into the backs of her knees. The move would cause Alwine to fall backward and allow Buzas to grind his groin into Alwine's buttocks.
Defense attorney George Naegle dismissed the move as a "juvenile prank that Joe never grew out of" that Buzas did to both men and women.
Naegle told jurors Buzas did not hire Alwine because, at 24 with a bachelor's degree in communication, she was unqualified to be the baseball club's general manager, not because she rebuffed his offers to sleep with him.
Naegle accused Alwine of using a weeklong Salt Lake visit as a "perfect plan" to visit her ex-boyfriend, then a pitcher for the Buzz.
Wood rebutted the allegation, saying Alwine didn't need an excuse to visit her friend and that she truly was interested in a position with Buzz.
Three women, two former Buzz employees and one potential employee, testified that they, too, were victims of sexual harassment by Buzas.
One of the women, Colleen Clay Martin, has her own federal lawsuit pending with similar allegations.
E-mail: awelling@desnews.com