Interesting news out of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania where a jury awarded David Rudovsky and Leonard Sosnov $90K each against West Publishing for defamation and for placing the Defendants in a false light. In addition to the $180K, the jury also slapped West with punitive damages for $2.5M for each defendant.
Here are the court documents for the jury’s verdict:

The background of the case is covered very well by Erika Wayne at Legal Research Plus, and the jury decision was broken by Louis J. Siricos, Jr. at Legal Skills Prof Blog. Basically, it seems that West tried to cut the salaries of the authors of West’s publication on Pennsylvania criminal procedure treaties, which Rudovsky and Sosnov refused to accept. According to the complaint, West publishing went ahead and published a pocket part for 2008 updates, and included the names of the two professors.
West Publishing argued that the authors were not damaged from the update… but, it seems that the jury seems to think otherwise and gave the authors a $5 million Christmas present.