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Insurance company First Trinity Financial and its CEO have been awarded $4.3 million in a defamation case against a former director of the company.
Wayne Pettigrew, who is also a former Oklahoma state legislator, left First Trinity in 2013. Upon leaving the company, Pettigrew issued a press release calling for an investigation into First Trinity CEO Gregg Zahn over stock purchases, according to a report in the Oklahoman.
Pettigrew’s press release – and a letter he wrote to Oklahoma Securities Department Director Irving Faught – intimated that Zahn may have violated the law by using his insider status to place 130,000 shares of stock with his family so he could buy them back at 10 cents a share after his divorce, the Oklahoman reported. The letter to Faught also said that Zahn was vice president of a Montana company that had been cited multiple times for securities fraud, and that criminal proceedings had been brought against him.
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But a jury found that Pettigrew had defamed the company and Zahn and breached his fiduciary duties to the company, the Oklahoman reported. The jury awarded First Trinity $800,000 and Zahn $3.5 million.
“For both the company and Mr. Zahn, this is a vindication for what Mr. Pettigrew said in the press release,” said Zahn’s attorney, Keith Ward. “The jury and the trial court each did a good job.”
“The last four years since Mr. Pettigrew's press release have been extremely difficult for me because of the misinformation that was communicated to my board of directors, the company's shareholders and the hundreds of people I deal with on a day-to-day basis,” Zahn said in a statement. “I am extremely happy that the jury understood the truth and firmly stated that Mr. Pettigrew's attempts to harm me and the company were unjustified and were defamatory.”
Pettigrew told the Oklahoman that he intended to appeal the decision, but Ward said he was confident that any appeal would fail.
