In his ruling today Manhattan federal court, US District Judge Paul Oetken sided with complainant billionaire William Koch, who also claimed the jury award for Eric Greenberg's 24 bottles of wine were overpriced. Bloomberg said Koch, whose brothers are Tea Party founders David Koch and Charles Koch and have established Florida-based Oxbow Carbon & Minerals LLC, sought legal action against Greenberg, who claimed to the billionaire the bottles of wine he sold to the billionaire was the best in the world and that some of them dated back to the era before World War I.
In Koch's lawsuit, the complainant is contesting that the 1864 Chateau Latour bottle and two 1950 Chateau Petrus magnums were not what they seemed to be. Koch had purchased the Chateau Latour bottle for $14,160 and the magnums at $20,060 each. Koch also claimed that Greenberg had misled house Zachys Wine Auctions Inc. and buyers about the authenticity of bottles.
A jury has found Greenberg, who is founder and chairman emeritus of Scient Corp, guilty in April 2013 of the charges filed by Koch. Koch was then awarded with $379,000 in compensatory damages plus punitive damages amounting to $12 million. However, Oetken ruled that the award should be reduced to a little less than a million dollars.
Oetken explained in court, "While the flagrancy of Greenberg's fraud merits some award of punitive damages, the harm he caused is less compelling. This harm was economic in nature and none of its targets -- neither Koch nor other potential buyers at auction -- were financially vulnerable."
Oetken also rejected Koch's request for over $7.8 million in award for legal fees as he said the cost has no relationship to the total amount of the actual damages at hand. The judge also noted that a total of 36 attorneys had been tapped to resolve the case over a six-year period.
Koch's spokesman, Brad Goldstein, said in a phone interview to Bloomberg, "Our goal from the start was never about the money, it was always to shine a bright light on the fraud that has gone undetected. (The court found) Eric Greenberg's conduct was reprehensible, that he was a fraudster. Whether it'a dollar or whether it's over a million dollars, that's going to follow him for the rest of his life."
