Pastor’s Wife Didn’t Assault Flight Attendant, Houston Jury Decides

Trials & Litigation

Pastor’s Wife Didn’t Assault Flight Attendant, Houston Jury Decides

Posted Aug 15, 2008, 11:27 am CST
By Martha Neil

Defended by a high-profile Houston trial lawyer in the trial of a Continental Airlines flight attendant's lawsuit claiming that she had been assaulted by the wife of a well-known televangelist, Victoria Osteen exclaimed "Thank you Jesus!" yesterday as she learned that the jury had believed her side of the story.

"Jury foreman Gilles Labbe said the panel agreed almost from the beginning that no assault had taken place," reports the Houston Chronicle. "Labbe, the president of a small Houston oil company, described the case as 'a complete waste of time.' He added that if the jury could have awarded court costs to the Osteens, he would have voted to do it."

Jurors apparently believed that an incident had occurred on board an airliner headed from Houston to Vail, Colo., in December 2005, as flight attendant Sharon Brown had contended. However, they seemed to feel Brown had exaggerated a verbal altercation which fell short of the assault for which she had sought more than $400,000 in damages in a state-court lawsuit, according to the newspaper.

The lawsuit contended that Osteen, who is a co-pastor with her husband, Joel, of Lakewood Church, pushed Brown into a bathroom door and elbowed her over a stain on her first-class seat.

Osteen was represented by attorney Rusty Hardin. She was earlier fined $3,000 by the Federal Aviation Administration concerning the incident for interfering with a flight crew.

Brown's attorney, Reginald McKamie, says his client hasn't decided whether to appeal.

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