So reports the Greensboro News & Record:
A jury in Guilford County District Court this week awarded $9 million to a former Greensboro woman, agreeing that her husband’s lover ruined their marriage….In the lawsuit, Cynthia Shackelford said her husband began an affair with [Anne] Lundquist before the Shackelfords separated in April 2005. She said she and her husband were still in love when Lundquist broke up the marriage.
Thanks to Ken R. Ashford for the pointer.
Matt says:
I believe that the moral is that if your spouse is to take a lover, it should be a rich one.
March 18, 2010, 1:59 pmyankee says:
If the husband was worth a lot of money, her economic loss could be extremely high. And if true love is a pearl of great price, ruining it would cause a lot of non-economic harm as well (though who commits adultery in a case of true love?)
Can you get punitive damages for this kind of thing in North Carolina? If they were awarded that could have jacked the award up a lot.
Unless the $9 million is based on economic loss, one does wonder what the plaintiff could possibly have proven to justify such a large award. I smell a substantial reduction coming.
March 18, 2010, 1:59 pmThorley Winston says:
Wow! Not to self: don’t have an affair with someone else’s spouse in North Carolina. ;)
Seriously though, I suppose if we’re going to use the civil court system* to punish bad actors in the hopes of deterring others, this isn’t any more of an unjust result than slapping a polluter or an insurance company that breaches a contract with punitive damages.
* All things being equal, I’d prefer that the civil court system be reserved for making people whole and leaving punishment up to the criminal courts where the Defendant has the protection of a higher burden of proof but that ship sailed a long time ago.
March 18, 2010, 2:05 pmrbj says:
John Edwards lives in North Carolina. How much money does Ms. Hunter have?
March 18, 2010, 2:08 pmJohn Herbison says:
North Carolina is one of the few states that still recognizes alienation of affection as a tort. Does the plaintiff have an obligation to mitigate damages?
I wonder what a jury would award Elizabeth Edwards if she sued Rielle Hunter? (Then again, her husband may have been so deficient in character that she may now be better off. )
March 18, 2010, 2:11 pmMike McDougal says:
Love can be one-sided, and she’s not suing for her husband’s damages.
March 18, 2010, 2:12 pmben says:
Are you really that naive?
March 18, 2010, 2:18 pmyankee says:
Fair enough.
Yep. :-)
March 18, 2010, 2:22 pmTN Atty says:
From the link in the post to LinkedIn:
Anne Lundquist’s Specialties:
Student Affairs, Risk Management
March 18, 2010, 2:32 pm
ScottG says:
Haha, Guilford College is right across the street from my law office. I don’t personally know this Shackleford guy, but I’m sure some of the guys I work with do. I doubt he was worth $9,000,000.00 though.
March 18, 2010, 2:45 pmtheobromophile says:
Elizabeth Edwards isn’t going after Rielle; she’s going after the wealthier Andrew Young. He has to be shipping his book royalties into an overseas account right now. :)
March 18, 2010, 2:47 pmstashy says:
It’s a fair bet that the girlfriend wouldn’t even have had the opportunity to alienate the husband’s affections had the wife not already done so.
March 18, 2010, 2:49 pmneurodoc says:
…and it all should unfold in Guilford County or one of the few other jurisdiction where the law still recognizes this cause of action and juries are willing to award mega damages for offenses that are not all that exceptional these days. As a relative of mine whose lawyer husband left her high and dry with the kids to be with an old flame who had divorced from Jack Welch of GE fame and fortune could tell you.
March 18, 2010, 3:07 pmPatrick says:
This is funny. Both the cheating husband and the other woman claim to be experts in mitigation of risk for colleges and universities in the context of employment law. Scroll down to “The President as Risk Manager”:
http://www.wells.edu/pdfs/presidents_symposium_schedule.pdf
I wonder what advice Shackleford and Lundquist give to university presidents about handling sexual relationships in the workplace?
March 18, 2010, 3:12 pmneurodoc says:
The law allows a cause of action in circumstances like these against the spouse’s lover, but not the spouse? Is there some reason why only the spuse’s lover should be made to compensate the injured party? In North Carolina, do courts take notice of why the marriage failed, e.g., adultery on the part of one spouse, when deciding on alimony and child custody?
Interestingly enough, it is very hard for a P to prevail in a medical malpractice case in those parts, no matter how egregious the negligence and serious the consequences. Juries don’t like to find against doctors there, and when they do, they are pretty parsimonious with the awards. I guess it’s a “cultural” thing what the law and the citizenry think should be compensated through tort claims.
March 18, 2010, 3:17 pmPer Son says:
This is so dumb. I do not believe that anyone can be seduced or “taken away” from their love unless they leave willingly. It is that basic and simple.
March 18, 2010, 3:22 pmTamerlane says:
Someone tell Sandra Bullock.
March 18, 2010, 3:40 pmfrankcross says:
It’s a stupid tort, people thought it had fallen by the wayside until NC reinvigorated it a while back. A couple of other states, I think Mississippi, have also done so.
I think historically it was an artifact of women as property. I.e., a husband could sue for another man seducing his wife, as if his property were taken. At least now it seems to be gender equal.
March 18, 2010, 3:50 pmPatrick says:
The cause of action derives from English common law. The rationale behind the is that a married person has a quasi-property interest in a harmonious marriage and the exclusive favors of his or her spouse. The interloper in the marriage is the one deemed to have caused this damage, and therefore is the one liable for the tort.
Yes, for alimony. For child custody, the best interests of the child are considered although of course evidence of adultery or other scandalous behavior by one parent may be considered in determining those interests.
Tell that to John Edwards, David Kirby, Charles Becton, Art Donaldson, Elizabeth Kuniholm, and any number of other lawyers I could name.
As to the law of torts in North Carolina, that’s a subject beyond the scope of a blog comment. Logan and Logan is the book I’d recommend to a newly admitted lawyer.
As to the citizenry, overgeneralizing as you have would be be a serious mistake for a lawyer working here on a pro hac vice admission. As with any large (ninth highest population per best census estimates) and old state, North Carolina has many cultures and regional distinctions in population. Within an afternoon’s drive of the capital, one might enter moneyed sunbelt cities, college towns scarcely right of Berkeley, rusting industrial cities, socially stratified Old South agricultural areas, Scotch-Irish appalachia, islands that are composed of families who’ve lived there since Elizabethan times, and counties where the dominant population is Native American.
It’s not a homogeneous state.
March 18, 2010, 3:56 pmJohn Herbison says:
Would evidence that the marriage was an unhappy one, notwithstanding the conduct of the defendant, be admissible to show that lower damages should be awarded? Just intuitively, I would think so, but I don’t practice there.
March 18, 2010, 4:35 pmHarry Schell says:
“Alienation of affection” I thought comes under the heading of loss of physical…ah…comity. Was this fellow really that good?
Remembered all the birthdays, brought flowers every day, etc., also?
March 18, 2010, 4:35 pmJay says:
I’m going to avoid looking at the newspaper story so I can continue to hope that the cheating husband’s first name is Rusty.
March 18, 2010, 4:36 pmmalpractice says:
neurodoc,
you’ll probably enjoy this opinion, also from the south, where the jury awarded no damages when the doctor had operated on the wrong knee.
The trial judge did a JNOV, which was affirmed (though the plaintiff ultimately recovered nothing anyway- the defendant he tried the case against got a credit for his pretrial settlements, and his damages did not exceed the amount of the credit).
Leaving aside the technical reasons that the plaintiff, correctly, got nothing in the end, I am still struck by the fact that this jury awarded nothing to a man who got the wrong knee cut on.
March 18, 2010, 4:54 pmPatrick says:
Absolutely. Apart from blanket denial, it’s the most common defense to show that the marriage was already trashed and on its way out before the affair started.
It’s worth noting that many more of these suits are brought than get reported on in the news. “Jurors conclude affair didn’t occur,” “Jurors award shrewish wife / overbearing husband nominal damages of $1,” and “Jurors exercise discretion to nullify antediluvian English tort law” never make the newspapers.
March 18, 2010, 4:57 pmgab says:
I wonder if the husband had already thought through the possibility of this kind of suit and together with his wife conspired to relieve his “lover” of the 9 million.
March 18, 2010, 5:02 pmPer Son says:
Jay,
I got your reference. Perhaps it was really John Redcorn.
March 18, 2010, 5:11 pmJoe T. Guest says:
“Honestly, your honor. She came over to me, flashed them big brown eyes of hers, and I totally forgot about how in love with my wife I had been right up until that instant. I know I cheated on my spouse, but frankly, I think there oughtta be an inducement to adultery tort covering just these situations…”
March 18, 2010, 5:17 pmcelticdragon says:
I am a student at Guilford College. I believe I used your firm to handle my work injury case a few years ago :)
March 18, 2010, 5:28 pmBarbara Skolaut says:
Ummmm, that doesn’t compute.
How, exactly, did Lundquist “break up their marriage”? Wasn’t the husband a willing participant in the “breaking up”? If he was “still in love” with his wife, what was he doing screwing around on her? Or is she claiming that men (or at least her man) are hound dogs and just can’t help themselves?
Give me a break.
March 18, 2010, 7:40 pmreadery says:
Ya let the people run the government, and they do the darndest things.
March 18, 2010, 9:33 pmPreston Earle says:
The News & Record reports this morning:
March 19, 2010, 10:27 amDougInSanDiego says:
Even if Yevgeniy Vladimirovich were to don his tooth fairy costume, wave his magic wand, and right every legal wrong that exists in the land ..
what difference would it make when a ‘jury of our peers’ remains free to commit atrocities such as this?
March 19, 2010, 7:22 pmFat Man says:
Yeah, right. The wife is a moron.
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March 20, 2010, 8:27 amk
$9M alienation of affection award in NC says:
[...] of court for failure to pay spousal support. (Greensboro News-Record March 18 and March 17 via Volokh). We’ve been covering the issue for years, as a click on the tags will [...]
March 20, 2010, 12:31 pmDougInSanDiego says:
..
March 20, 2010, 4:00 pmneurodoc says:
I would readily agree that it is not a homogeneous state no matter how similar things may look cruising down I-40 between Winston-Salem, Greensboro, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham. (I can only speculate about Charlotte and Ashville, which aren’t on that same East-West axis, and have developed/evolved in their own ways. Do you count Greensboro, where this P won the big $$$ award for aliention of affections a particularly P friendly place?) My three experiences of med mal cases in NC, one as an onlooker (Boone), the other two as co-counsel admitted pro hac vice (Winston-Salem and Chapel Hill), unsuccessful and very successful, left me with the impression that some places in NC were far better than others from a P’s perspective. I don’t know where John Edwards won his big med mal verdicts, but I would be surprised to hear they were in Forsyth County based on what I was told and what I encountered. It also may be that local “good old boys” fare better than “interlopers” notwithstanding the merits and how well argued their cases.
I don’t know if there are any reliable indices of how P friendly/unfriendly any venue is with regard to tort claims generally and med mal ones in particular. Clearly, they differ, sometimes hugely with a state (e.g., Pittsburgh vs Philadelphia; Baltimore vs Montgomery County), whether because of differences in the law, differences in the “culture,” or whatever.
Thanks for the marriage-related answers. If adultery may be taken into account when deciding on alimony, can it be taken into account when dividing marital property, or can have no bearing? (I should think no bearing, since property rights should be a more objective matter than the question of support after divorce.)
March 20, 2010, 6:43 pmneurodoc says:
How might the P go about mitigating, by seeking a lover for herself as soon as possible? The jury would then have to decide how much less the P should receive because of the mitigation?
Are damages lowered for loss of consortium depending on how happy/unhappy the marriage appeared to be to a jury? I suppose the happier the marriage appeared to have been, the more likely a jury would be to award big damages, but I wonder how much evidence a judge would allow in to prove something so hard to establish with any objectivity. What may look to others like a rocky marriage may work for the couple, while what may look to outsiders like an ideal marriage may in fact be a terrible one.
Reportedly the ex- and his lover are still together. And if one were to conspire to those ends, they should know that the D will be able to pay up. Big $$$ awards are pretty meaningless, except to make a splash in the news, unless the D has the wherewithal to pay, and this isn’t the kind of thing where an insuror is around to write the check. I very much doubt that Ms. Shackleford will ever see a fraction of that $9M, that is unless Ms. Lundquist, the small college dean, is independently wealthy.
March 20, 2010, 7:05 pmNicolas says:
Alienation of affection is an indefensible law. It presumes that the married partner does not have full control over his behavior. It makes no more sense than a law holding car dealers responsible for accidents by consumers, or one holding silverware makers culpable for a murders committed with knives. The wife does not own her husband. She has no right to his potential future earnings or his affection. This isn’t like an accident where the victim loses the CAPACITY to earn. He has lost the DESIRE to share his money with her, and he should have the right to terminate that sharing at any time, for any reason, just as she should.
March 21, 2010, 9:36 amWells Woman says:
I’m a former student of Wells College and have had numerous personal interactions (informal conversations, formal meetings, etc.) with Dean Lundquist. I don’t really like her. In fact, I might actually dislike her, but, to my knowledge, she has never acted maliciously.
She never entered a written or verbal contract with Cynthia Shackelford, or any other person for that matter, in which she stated that she would refrain from sleeping with/dating Allen Shackelford. Allen was the one who signed that contract. Allen also seems to be claiming that the marriage was already ending two years before he even met Lundquist and that he slept with other women before her. If that is what he is telling the press, that is probably what he told Lundquist when they started their relationship. Whether or not Allen’s appraisal of the state of his marriage was true, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that Lundquist initiated a relationship with a happily married man who otherwise would have stayed with his wife. It also seems pretty clear that she never did anything to the husband against his will. A law that treats the actions of the contract-signer (Allen) as irrelevant, but the actions of a third party (Lundquist) as worth 9 million is more than a bit ridiculous.
I seem to recall a story where a gentleman asks a lady: “Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?” The lady blushes at the request but agrees. “Well, would you sleep with me for five dollars?”
“Certainly not!” she says, now offended. “Just what kind of woman do you think I am?”
“Madam, we’ve already established what you are. Now we’re just haggling over the price.”
Seeing how marriage is a legal contract between two people where there are expectations of sharing sex and money,usually the wife brings the sex and the husband the money, you could call it legal prostitution. If Cynthia is putting any price tag on her husband’s intangible love, that would seem to indicate that she subscribe to this opinion, which in turn says something rather unsavoury about her character.
Frankly, I think the 9 million price tag has more to do with the fact that Lundquist tried to represent herself and failed to show up in court. Not bothering to show up in court is hugely disrespectful to the judge. The two-day trial must have been basically Cynthia explaining how she was wronged with no one with any interest in fact-checking her story or testifying against her. Lundquist most definitely does not have 9 million dollars stashed away, not even if you drain her bank account, sell her house, her car (oh, wait, she carpools with the librarians), and all her belongings. I bet she doesn’t even have 1 million dollars. It doesn’t look like the husband has 9 million either.
As for the sanctity of marriage, how can you expect someone else to respect your marriage when your husband clearly doesn’t?
On a separate note, can North Carolina even enforce local laws on someone living in another state?
March 22, 2010, 4:06 amJohn Herbison says:
Where the tortious event(s) and the resulting harm occurred in North Carolina, that would be similar to a vehicle collision occurring in the state, with the negligent driver thereafter moving to another state. Apparently the affair occurred while Ms. Lundquist was working at Guilford College in North Carolina.
March 22, 2010, 9:09 amNicolas says:
@ Wells Woman
I’m not an attorney, but I’ve spent enough time in courtrooms to be disabused of the notion that typical judge deserves respect. My own view of what is risibly called the “justice system” aligns with H. L. Mencken’s:
The way I heard the story, it was not a gentleman but an attorney who enticed the woman to become his whore. Attorney’s are permitted to engage in negotiations which are forbidden to those who are not agents of the court.
March 22, 2010, 11:40 amfrank termini says:
I need this lawyer so bad. this is exactly what i have going on. a once best friend, for four years now has ruined my 30 year marriage. Can anyone tell me who this lawyer is Please? fmt953@gmail.com
April 15, 2010, 11:40 am