A Tarrant County jury on Monday handed down a verdict awarding Robert and Jane Cull of Mansfield $51 million in their lawsuit against Houston-based homebuilder Perry Homes, according to this report in The Dallas Morning News. The brief article does not say why the couple were suing Perry Homes.
The article does mention that the trial that resulted in this week’s multi-million-dollar jury award came after the Texas Supreme Court overturned, by a 5-4 vote, an $800,000 arbitration award in a complaint filed by the couple against Perry Homes. And it points out that Bob Perry is “politically influential,” and that he and members of his family had contributed more than $260,000 to the political campaigns of all nine judges on the all-Republican court.
Former Dallas Voice staff writer David Webb wrote a series of articles in early 2007 regarding Perry Homes’ lack of any policies protecting LGBT people from discrimination in employment, and about contributions the company’s founder, Bob Perry, and his family made to Gov. Rick Perry and other, shall we say, less-than-gay-friendly Texas politicians. You can read those stories here, here and here.
Perry spokesman Anthony Holm, in an AP-wire news release, called the jury award “jackpot justice” and said it was an abuse of the justice system. But isn’t Perry the one abusing the system by dragging this couple through the courts for a decade in hopes of wearing them out? And isn’t it an abuse of the system to contribute millions to the campaigns of judges and politicians? It seems foolish for Perry to issue this press release, since it caused the story of his abusive behavior to be picked up nationally. HOT is collecting more stories that shine light on Bob Perry at https://homeownersoftexas.org/Bob_Perry.html.