On April 20, a Tarrant County jury returned a $13.7 million plaintiffs’ verdict in an unusual suit filed by an attorney and his wife, finding defendants Jerry Coyel, Shannon Coyel and Charlie Doescher liable for defamation.
The allegations in the plaintiffs’ fifth amended petition in Lesher, et al. v. Doescher, et al ., filed April 5, are as follows: In 2008, Mark Lesher, an attorney who had a practice in Clarksville, and his wife Rhonda, who owned a beauty salon in that town, were wrongfully accused of sexually assaulting Shannon Coyel, the wife of a former client of Mark Lesher’s. [See the petition.]
