A NEW York court has awarded over $203m in damages and legal fees to billionaire hedge fund founder Louis Bacon in a defamation case against his former Lyford Cay neighbour, Peter Nygard, according to US reports.
The ruling marks the end of a more than decade long, bitter saga between the two over their neighbouring luxury properties in the affluent gated community.
Mr Bacon had alleged that the disgraced Canadian fashion designer had embarked on a “harassment campaign” against him in The Bahamas - a conclusion US judges also arrived at.
In a ruling handed down Thursday, a New York state court appointed referee concluded that Nygard tried to ruin Mr Bacon’s reputation when he falsely claimed that he was a Ku Klux Klan member, was guilty of insider trading and was involved in the death of an employee among other damaging claims.
“Any one of these would have been a significant assault on his character, the combination of all four depicted him as an evildoer of the highest order,” the ruling said.
“The effects were compounded by the almost decade-long duration of the smears and the global and multimedia distribution they were given - which included at one point a rally in The Bahamas at which participants wore t-shirts and held signs proclaiming (Bacon’s) alleged racism.”
As a result, Nygard, 81, was ordered to pay $50m in compensation for damages, and additional $100m in punitive damages and more than $53m in legal and other related fees.
Nygard is currently being held in a Canadian prison awaiting trial on charges of sexual assault and forcible confinement, according to Canadian media reports.
He has also been charged in the US with sex trafficking and racketeering offences allegedly springing from “a decades-long pattern of criminal conduct involving at least dozens of victims in the United States, The Bahamas and Canada, among other locations” and faces extradition there.
However, Nygard, who has maintained his innocence, cannot be extradited to the US until his court cases in Canada have been settled.
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