Anheuser-Busch

THE INTERNATIONAL brewery's 1997 removal of a Florida distributorship from the family of baseball legend Roger Maris became a $72.6 million embarrassment. The distributorship, which served the Gainesville-Ocala area, was given to Maris's by August Busch, Jr., as a reward for Maris's role in the St. Louis Cardinals's 1967 World Series victory. Busch then owned both the baseball team and the St. Louis-based brewery.

In the mid-1990s, Anheuser-Busch started consolidating wholesalers into larger regions. The company offered the Maris family $20 million for Maris Distributing. When the offer was refused, Anheuser-Busch terminated the wholesaler's contract, alleging that the Marises had sold outdated beer and failed to respond to customer complaints. The Marises accused the brewer of engaging in a smear campaign to justify its giving the distributorship to a Busch family friend.

The Marises also argued, unsuccessfully, that a contract provision preventing them from selling to public investors violated antitrust laws. Although the antitrust charges failed, a Florida jury decided in August 2001 that Busch had lacked adequate grounds to terminate the distributorship. The jury awarded the Marises $50 million for the value of the business plus $89.7 million for lost revenues. Judge Buzzy Green voided the larger award, citing Florida statutes against awarding lost revenues, though he added accrued interest to the $50 million.

Anheuser-Busch's 2002 annual report stated that the company appealed the decision and had not paid the $72.6 million recorded in October 2001. The Marises also filed a $1 billion defamation suit against the brewery; this remains unresolved in early 2004. “It sends a warning signal to suppliers to change the way they rank and yank their distributors,” Mark H. Rodman, former general counsel to the National Beer Wholesalers Association, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after the August 2001 verdict. But, Rodman cautioned, “Very few legal teams can go toe-to-toe against A-B.”