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Houston Chronicle:

A Fort Bend County jury has awarded $1 million to a Rosenberg man who filed a libel lawsuit against the Fort Bend Star and a reporter.

Wade Brady, 27, sued the newspaper and journalist LeaAnn Klentzman about the front-page story, "Deputy Brady's tape collecting called 'Roadside Suppression,' " which ran in the Star's Jan. 15, 2003 edition.

The article detailed alleged tape-recorded meetings between Brady's father, Fort Bend County Chief Deputy Craig Brady, and deputies involved in a 2001 traffic stop that ended with the younger Brady being ticketed as a minor in possession of alcohol.

The libel lawsuit, filed in April 2003, alleged that Klentzman wrote a story that "conveys a false and defamatory impression of the plaintiff" and injured Wade Brady's reputation. The complaint also alleged that Klentzman did not interview any of the three officers involved in the traffic stop, "fabricated many of the statements in the article," and deliberately failed to note that Wade Brady was found not guilty of the alcohol charge at a 2002 jury trial.

Carter Publications Inc., which does business as the Fort Bend Star and is owned by Beverly Carter, also was named as a defendant. The company was accused of using its Stafford-based weekly to advance a long-standing vendetta against Chief Deputy Brady and his family.

Houston lawyer John Zavitsanos, who represented Wade Brady with law partner Todd Mensing, said the trial's most important outcome was clearing their client's name.

This verdict is significant because it sends a clear message to the media that the community is going to hold the media to a standard" [of responsibility], Mensing said. "The article was false, it was calculated to be false and it was very important to … stand up against this sort of abusive reporting."

Attorney John Zavitsanos quoted in the Houston Chronicle

The dispute between Klentzman and Craig Brady dates back to at least 1992, when both were Fort Bend deputies but supported different candidates for sheriff. After leaving the sheriff's office, Klentzman became a reporter for the Star.

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7554308.html

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