Love 'em and leave 'em? In Georgia, it'll cost you
Last Updated: Friday, July 25, 2008 | 12:46 PM ET
CBC News
A jury in the U.S. state of Georgia gave some relief this week to a furious woman scorned by a man, about $150,000 worth.
Rosemary Shell, 46, was scheduled to marry Daniel Gibbs in 2007 but he broke off the engagement a few months before the planned wedding.
Shell testified that she’d quit a high-paying job in Florida to join Gibbs in Gainesville, Ga., about 80 km northeast of Atlanta.
Her new position paid less than half of what she earned as a human resources manager for a newspaper company, she said.
She told the jury of six men and six women that she wanted compensation for lost income and for the suffering caused by Gibbs’s desertion.
“He asked me to marry him. He gave me a ring and I gave up my life and my career,” Shell testified, “He told me he would pay my bills and that we would be married by the holidays and we would live happily ever after.”
Instead, she returned home one day to find Gibbs’s wedding ring, a cheque for $5,000 and a note breaking off the engagement.
Gibbs was having an affair with another woman, Shell said.
For his part, the reluctant bridegroom said Shell had heavy debts and he got tired of paying them off.
His lawyer, Hammond Law, told jurors that finding in favor of Shell’s suit would open the floodgates to similar cases.
'Hope the Brinks truck backs up to the jury room'
“You would be sending the message that if you have a dispute with somebody and you think they have been a scoundrel, go get a lawyer and hope the Brinks truck backs up to the jury room,” Law said in his closing argument.
“If you award one penny, you’re saying, ‘File frivolous lawsuits.’”
Juror Delita Smith told local media that she disagreed with the award, but was persuaded to go along with it by fellow jurors.
“He paid her a bundle, along with the engagement ring, and that really was worth a lot of money,” Smith told an Atlanta-area television station.
She said the amount of the award was based on one year of Shell’s former salary, plus benefits and a bonus she would have received if she hadn’t quit to marry Gibbs.
Judge Kathlene Gosselin said lawsuits for breach of promise in broken engagements were not unknown in the U.S.
“By the very nature of the action, there must be an actual promise to marry and acceptance of that promise before one can be held liable for a breach,” Gosselin said in her instructions to the jury.
Neither Gibbs nor his lawyer commented after the verdict.
