NEWS

Judge upholds $4.8M verdict against El Jamal

Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
jfitzgib@lohud.com
Sammy El Jamal, at right, in a 2006 photo with rapper Jadakiss.

A state Supreme Court judge upheld a $4.785 million judgment against controversial gas station mogul Sammy El Jamal, dismissing his claims that the judge at the civil trial mishandled the case.

In a ruling handed down last week, Justice Francesca Connolly said El Jamal failed to prove that Judge Lester Adler tainted the trial by not letting El Jamal represent himself and by not questioning whether a juror who was admittedly not impartial swayed the rest of the panel against him.

El Jamal, 40, of Purchase, also claimed Adler improperly instructed the jury before the verdict.

"Since El Jamal does not argue that the verdict was not supported by legally sufficient evidence or that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence, it must be assumed that he is seeking to set aside the verdict in the interest of justice," Connolly wrote. "Here, the court finds that none of El Jamal's contentions, either standing alone or together in the aggregate, constitute a denial of substantial justice warranting a new trial."

El Jamal's attorney and a spokesman for his companies did not return calls Monday.

Marc Oxman, the attorney representing the plaintiff in the civil case, said he felt "the judge's ruling is fair, and I don't anticipate that any appellate court is going to interfere with it."

The hefty $4.785 million verdict stemmed from a civil lawsuit filed in 2011 by Brent Coscia, an employee of a chain of gas stations co-owned by El Jamal. Coscia claimed that El Jamal and an associate, Bryan Orser, conspired to have Coscia arrested on trumped up charges that he threatened to kill El Jamal.

Coscia was arrested but was acquitted at trial in October 2011, two months before he filed the civil lawsuit.

In court papers, El Jamal blamed the verdict on "a hostile compilation of pro-Israeli judges" who disapproved of his Palestinian heritage. He said Adler failed to question the jury on whether they were swayed by a juror who was dismissed after admitting that she could not be impartial. He also said Adler denied him his right to represent himself.

But Connolly said there was no evidence the dismissed juror discussed the case with other jurors, and backed Adler's decision to deny El Jamal the right to represent himself, a request El Jamal made midway through the trial.

The judge wrote that "the record demonstrates that El Jamal's volatile demeanor... would have presented a distraction to the jury and unnecessarily prolonged the trial."

In other motions El Jamal claimed he did not have the money to pay the verdict anyway.

Twitter:@jfitzgibbon