The Madness of Joe Francis: "I thought we were all just having fun. I was wrong." (47 page)

In 2004, she is hospitalized for the first time and for the next six weeks she’s in and out of treatment centers.

“Three different institutions in three different areas, treated by several different doctors. All of these doctors said she was suffering from bipolar disorder. She was suffering from hallucinations. The plaintiffs would have you believe that Plaintiff B’s issues with bipolar disorder were caused by Mr. Francis. That doesn’t make any sense. Dr. Lebowitz commented on the diagnosis, saying that, based on her review which did not include talking with other physicians, that she didn’t believe B had bipolar disorder. Certainly, bipolar disorder doesn’t fit in with the plaintiffs’ theory of the case. It’s not convenient.”

During her treatment at these mental health facilities, she never mentioned Girls Gone Wild or Joe Francis. Instead, B claimed she didn’t have a drug or alcohol problem. She talked about her father.

“Ultimately, the doctors formed the opinion that she was grieving and she needed to grieve.

“Her mother was aware of the Girls Gone Wild incident, she didn’t disclose it to medical professionals. Her daughter has been institutionalized, something is very wrong with her daughter; I think that her mom would want to make sure she got the help she needed, but didn’t see fit to include this information so that the doctors could perform an analysis on this.”

Dr. Lebowitz testified that she disagreed with the bipolar diagnosis because B had not shown signs of bipolar in the last few years despite being off medication.

“What we didn’t hear from Dr. Lebowitz was B’s prescription was changed. She was medicated. And at that time she still hadn’t disclosed, even once the medication was right, she didn’t disclose anything about Girls Gone Wild or this incident.”

As far as her self image was concerned, Plaintiff B appeared in two movies during her time in California, “Spider-Man” and “Starsky and Hutch.”

“The incident with Girls Gone Wild was not so debilitating that she couldn’t imagine herself ever being on film again. She certainly wasn’t afraid of the attention, being in a movie, of pursuing an acting career. She was aware of what Girls Gone Wild was and what she was doing.”

The plaintiffs’ experts testified that people’s brains don’t fully develop until their mid-20s.

“This incident occurred on March 31, 2002. On June 1, 2002, B turned 18. In those two and a half months, did she develop that much?”

There are hundreds of thousands of women in these films, many of them are in their early 20s or late teens. Should they be compensated because they didn’t know what they were doing?

“Do two months really matter? Three years, four years, five years? These women all certainly knew what a video camera was. It’s not like they didn’t know the camera was right there. Certainly when something is on film someone may see it. That’s logical.

“My two-year-old knows what the video camera is for.”

She turned her attention to plaintiffs J and S.

They’d seen the video. They could draw their own conclusion as to the girls’ demeanor.

“The laughing, the giggling, the ‘I’ll do it too!’”

She said Plaintiff S’s contention that a cameraman had badgered them for 30 minutes to get them to flash was ludicrous considering there were hundreds of willing women in the same area.

“Video doesn’t forget. It doesn’t make mistakes. It doesn’t misrepresent. Take that video for what it is. That is an account of what happened that day on Front Beach Road, plain and simple. I didn’t see any shame. Did you? Or did you see a girl sitting the front seat, smoking a cigarette, who thought it was cool, who wanted to fit in, whose sister was egging her on and daring her to do it?”

She said kids of this generation are exposed to more things, through the internet and cell phones, than past generations, and are therefore more worldly. Families living in this area are also more familiar with what goes on during Spring Break.

“These aren’t innocent girls who aren’t somewhat familiar with what goes on on Spring Break. It is a moral cesspool at Spring Break on Panama City Beach.”

And Plaintiff S testified that she was smoking a cigarette that day, even though she was just 15.

“I’m not implying that makes her a bad person. But Plaintiff S testified that she was smoking because she thought it was cool. She wanted to fit in.”

Plaintiff S failed ninth grade, she was already a bad student before she met Girls Gone Wild.

“What excuse did she give for that? She had a creepy gym teacher. Who didn’t in high school have a creepy gym teacher or a creepy coach who taught biology?” Seaton-Virga said with a shrug and a smile. “Maybe it was just me.”

S had an opportunity to go to summer school, but she declined and was held back.

“Her parents didn’t think enough about education to jerk her up by the collar and say, ‘You’re getting your butt to summer school.’” Ultimately, she dropped out in the 11th grade. She then ended up in an abusive relationship and got involved with drugs.

“She testified, tearfully, that she even tried crack cocaine. Is that Mr. Francis’ fault? Is that the fault of Girls Gone Wild? Or were there other contributing factors? That’s for you to decide, if Plaintiff S’s life problems are due to Mr. Francis. Would she have gone down that path but for Mr. Francis?”

“Plaintiff S also testified that for eight years she maintained employment. That’s saying something, that someone had been able to do the same thing for eight years, especially in their 20s.”

As a result of her abusive relationship, S ended up going to counseling, which was provided free to her by the state. “I don’t believe that was mentioned on her direct by my esteemed colleague. And surprise, surprise, she didn’t say anything about Girls Gone Wild or Joe Francis. She didn’t realize what the reason for her poor choices and her situation in life was until she spoke to the plaintiffs’ doctors. (Lebowitz) testified she wasn’t a miracle worker, but, wow, they certainly became open once they started talking with Dr. Lebowitz. They really wanted to share their experiences then. But not to any of those other doctors. And that is consistent with each one of these women. If you ignore that, it is a travesty. It’s an excuse.”

And Selander’s assertion that S and J’s clip was “surrounded by hard-core pornography” on the DVD, “There’s no evidence to support that. But it sounds good.”

Plaintiff J also dropped out of school and, like her sister, she never told anyone about bullying, sexual bullying or being traumatized by Girls Gone Wild until she met with Lebowitz.

“She has three kids, but according to Dr. Lebowitz she has a fear of sexual contact and a fear of intimacy? I don’t think I need to comment on that.”

J also testified that she’s been in a long-term healthy relationship and “she did that without hundreds of thousands of dollars in counseling paid for by Mr. Francis. Amazing. She testified that she likes her job, she’s closer to her parents and that she’s still daddy’s girl.”

Her two suicide attempts came three and four years after she flashed for GGW. And when she was committed for those attempts, she said problems with her boyfriend were the cause.

She was the child of an alcoholic father and had lived with a boyfriend in her parents’ home when she was 15. When her parents separated for a time, J opted to stay with her alcoholic father to take care of him.

“This was a young lady with a lot on her shoulders who was growing up way faster than she needed to. But that is not the fault of Mr. Francis or Girls Gone Wild.”

When she was committed again in 2004, after her second suicide attempt, she told the doctors she was distraught because her new boyfriend had broken up with her.

“She didn’t tell that doctor she quit school because of Joe Francis or Girls Gone Wild or because she was teased and bullied. She told you that, but that’s not what she told the doctor.”

At that time, J said she wasn’t depressed or abusing drugs and there was no trauma in her life.

“Mr. Selander suggests that the other stressors in their lives were not relevant. I’m sure that is what the plaintiffs’ attorney would like you to believe because if they were relevant they would go to calculating damages. So he’s asking you to ignore that. I ask that you don’t. I ask that you look at the whole picture, that you look at the testimony both on the stand and the testimony elicited in deposition. When they weren’t looking at you. When they didn’t have their attorney here asking them the questions in front of you.

“Credibility is always an issue. If you feel like something was kept from you or you were somehow misled, that’s relevant.”

Seaton-Virga then started to talk about Dr. Leslie Lebowitz.

“Dr. Lebowitz was a talker, wasn’t she?” That got a smile from a few jurors. “She liked to talk. She had a lot of things that she wanted to get out and that she wanted to tell you about and, gosh darn it, she sure was going to do it. She sometimes couldn’t even remember the question by the time she was done talking. She had an agenda. She was going to hit all the talking points, every single one of them.”

She said Selander claimed that none of their experts had an ax to grind, didn’t have anything to gain by testifying the way they did. But Seaton-Virga pointed out that Lebowitz was paid $300 an hour while she conducted lengthy interviews, read through the volumes of medical records and depositions and then testified. “This was a very profitable experience for her.”

It was obvious that Lebowitz disliked the adult entertainment industry as a whole. But what was astounding, Seaton-Virga said, was how she discounted the diagnoses of the other professionals who had treated the plaintiffs. She’d concluded that they were wrong and she was right without ever talking to them.

“And what was the catch-phrase she kept using, ‘to a reasonable degree of medical certainty’? She could tell you with a reasonable degree of medical certainty the problems and obstacles encountered by these plaintiffs was due to the conduct of Mr. Francis, and that regardless of what they had told countless other trained psychologists and doctors, they were wrong. They didn’t have the whole picture.”

Lebowitz had said that wasn’t unusual, the girls wouldn’t open up to someone they didn’t feel was understanding.

“What did she say? They know compassion when they see it. Let’s talk about compassion. When you think ‘attorney’ do you think compassion? I am guessing that you probably don’t. I don’t. I deal with attorneys all the time. Compassion is the last word that comes to my mind. But who did they disclose to before Dr. Lebowitz, the compassionate doctor, the miracle worker? Their attorneys. But not the other trained medical professionals that had evaluated them previously.”

She told the jurors not to take what she was saying as a personal attack on the plaintiffs. She gave the plaintiffs credit for seeing an opportunity and going for it.

“Good for them. They see deep pockets and they’re going to try to dig right in.”

She said this case, however, was about personal responsibility.

“Where is the personal responsibility? At what point do you own it and say, ‘Yeah, I had something to do with that. Yes I had problems before this happened and they weren’t because of Mr. Francis and Girls Gone Wild.’”

As far as being psychologically captured by Francis, “successful people attract other people, especially when it comes to litigation.”

Seaton-Virga went on to discount the testimony of the cameramen, many of whom had been fired by GGW or were facing charges of their own when they gave their testimony.

Then she went back to personal responsibility.

“Imagine your daughter flashing, Spring Break, underage, smoking, drinking. Now imagine making her a millionaire for it. That’s certainly a lesson in personal responsibility.”

And, Seaton-Virga said, none of the girls could say how they’d been damaged.

“It’s a good thing that Dr. Lebowitz was able to tell everybody how they were damaged, since they didn’t realize they were damaged by Girls Gone Wild and Joe Francis.”

She said Selander suggested that each plaintiff should receive a million dollars each in lost earnings potential because they didn’t go to college. That number was only relevant if the jurors believed that all of these plaintiffs planned to go to college.

Seaton-Virga said one of the girls was skipping classes and failed a grade before she even met a cameraman.

“Look at these people as individuals, not as general statistics.”

She went to the issue of punitive damages. She said GGW had changed since 2003, and changed even more since the company got hit with record keeping violations in 2006.

If they were to award punitive damages it would be punishing the company twice. “Are there any other changes that could possibly be made now?”

She addressed the Pilot Ware printout. She told them this was just one step in the process and didn’t mean that Plaintiff B’s footage was considered good to go.

Smoak interrupted Seaton-Virga’s closing and told her it was getting late in the day.

“Are you saying, your honor, that I have five minutes to wrap up?” she asked. It was a pointed question and put Smoak on the spot. The defense would be even more sympathetic if the jurors believed the judge was shutting them down.

Smoak just told her to get to a good breaking point and she could resume in the morning.

She went back to the three-step identification procedures in place at Girls Gone Wild, but Selander objected. He said at sidebar that what she was saying in closing had not been testified to by a witness. Seaton-Virga pointed to Deutsch’s testimony. Selander complained there had been a lot of objectionable things to her closing and it “just kept going on and on.”

Smoak suggested they break for the night and Seaton-Virga could resume in the morning. She agreed and Smoak sent the jurors home.

“See everybody in the morning,” he said as he left the bench.

It worked out perfectly for Seaton-Virga. Not only would she send the jury home with her message ringing in their ears, but she’d get the first word in the morning.

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Chapter 55

“I don’t appreciate being manipulated”