Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 29, 1994 TAG: 9410310049
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LAS VEGAS LENGTH: Medium
Coughlin, who contended the sexual assault ended her Navy career, held her attorney's hand as the verdict was read. Her mother, sitting in the front row of the courtroom, wept.
The U.S. District Court jury determined the hotel and the Hilton Hotel Corp. acted with malice, and awarded Coughlin $1.7 million in actual damages, such as future loss of income and medical expenses.
The panel will return Monday to decide on punitive damages. Hilton was told to bring financial statements to court for the jury's use.
The jury, which heard seven weeks of testimony, deliberated more than a day before deciding on compensatory damages.
In closing arguments, Coughlin's attorney Dennis Schoville contended she should receive $5 million to $10 million in damages.
``We have lost the best of the best,'' Schoville said of the former Navy lieutenant and helicopter pilot who once was described as a ``bright star'' in a Navy report.
Coughlin, 32, resigned from the Navy in February, citing pressure resulting from an alleged attack by her peers at the infamous September 1991 convention of military aviators.
Hilton lawyer Eugene Wait didn't deny that Coughlin was assaulted. But based on the 19 years of Tailhook conventions at the hotel, he said attacks weren't predictable and thus the hotel shouldn't be held responsible.
``The law does not charge a hotel proprietor with knowing that which is not reasonably foreseeable,'' he said.
Wait said ``thousands and thousands of people'' attended Tailhook conventions over the years, and only once did someone complain. A woman in 1988 said she was attacked, but didn't pursue her complaint.
A Pentagon report said 83 women were assaulted or molested by drunken Navy and Marine aviators, and a dozen filed lawsuits in state and federal court here.
Coughlin's case was the first to go to trial. She also had sued the San Diego-based Tailhook Association, but settled for an undisclosed amount days before the trial began.
Coughlin, who attended the convention as an aide to Adm. Jack Snyder, took her story to the national media in the summer of 1992. She was invited to the White House where, she said, President Bush wept when told of her assault.
The accounts of Tailhook debauchery brought the resignation of former Navy Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett III and put on hold some 10,000 Navy and Marine promotions. The Navy and Marine Corps pursued 140 harassment cases, but none led to a court-martial.
by CNB