Jack Nicklaus was awarded $50 million by a Palm Beach County jury on Monday in a defamation lawsuit against his former company and business partners, according to a news report.

The 85-year-old golf icon and North Palm Beach resident filed the lawsuit in Palm Beach County court in 2023 against Nicklaus Companies LLC, the company’s executive chairman and billionaire banker Howard Milstein and executive vice president of Nicklaus Companies Andrew O’Brien.

The lawsuit centered on statements that were written in another lawsuit filed in New York, made by the company “at Mr. Milstein’s direction,” according to the complaint in Nicklaus’ Palm Beach County case. The New York lawsuit included false claims that Nicklaus wanted to accept a leadership role with the controversial Saudi golf league LIV Golf, and those claims were widely circulated to news reporters, clients and others in the golfing world, Nicklaus’s attorneys wrote.

Nicklaus met with several Saudi officials three times in 2021 and during one was asked “to accept a leadership role with the new Saudi golf league for what promised to be a significant amount of money,” according to the Nicklaus’s lawsuit complaint.

“Mr. Nicklaus knew immediately that it was something he could not do and turned it down on the spot,” his attorneys wrote in the complaint. “The offer was then increased to even greater amounts of money, but Mr. Nicklaus continued to stand firm.”

Association with LIV Golf had become “hugely controversial” by 2022, when the New York lawsuit was filed, Nicklaus’s lawsuit complaint said. Nicklaus’s attorneys alleged that Milstein wanted to tarnish Nicklaus’s reputation, who helped create the PGA Tour, and portrayed the company in the complaint as having “saved Mr. Nicklaus from himself” by convincing him to not explore the deal with the Saudi league.

The statements were included in the New York lawsuit complaint a year after Nicklaus declined the offer, his attorneys wrote in the Palm Beach County complaint, and more than 70 news outlets wrote articles including them.

During closing arguments Monday, Milstein’s and the company’s attorney, Barry Postman, told jurors the case was simply a “business dispute,” the Palm Beach Post reported, and that there was no evidence Nicklaus’ reputation was damaged.

The six-person jury’s verdict found the company participated in the false publishing of facts that exposed Nicklaus to “ridicule, hatred, mistrust, distrust or contempt,” according to the Palm Beach Post. While finding the company liable, a portion of the six-person jury’s verdict was in favor of Milstein and O’Brien, meaning they are not required to pay damages as well, the newspaper reported.

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