A federal jury on Monday returned a $17.5 million verdict in favor of Corey Airport Services in a suit that accused the city of Atlanta of engaging in political favoritism to maintain a long-running advertising contract at the Atlanta airport.

Corey Airport Services wins $8.5 in compensatory damages plus $9 million in punitives in case over how the city of Atlanta granted airport contracts

The jury, which began deliberating on Friday, awarded $8.5 million in compensatory damages shortly after lunch Monday. It found that the city had violated Corey Airport's equal protection rights by awarding Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport's advertising contract to political insiders with longtime ties to Atlanta's late mayor, Maynard Jackson.

The seven-person jury also determined that the city had conspired with its longtime airport advertising contractor, Clear Channel Outdoor Inc. (doing business as Clear Channel Airports Inc.) and the firm's minority partner, Barbara Fouch, to strip Corey Airports of its equal protection rights to a fair and impartial bidding process.

While a Corey spokeswoman told the Daily Report that Corey would not be able to collect punitive damages from the city, the jury determined that punitive damages were warranted against Clear Channel and Fouch. After announcing the initial verdict, the jury later Monday found Clear Channel liable for an additional $8.5 million in punitive damages and levied $500,000 in damages against Fouch.

In a news release sent out Monday, acting city attorney Peter J. Andrews said the city will appeal the jury verdict.

"The City is disappointed with today's verdict in the litigation involving the 2002 airport advertising procurement," Andrews' release stated. "The City maintains that the process used in the airport advertising procurement was fair and lawful and that all those involved acted with integrity. The City respects the judicial process, but does not believe the verdict is supported by the evidence presented at trial. The City will appeal the decision."

W. Ray Persons, a member of the King & Spalding team defending Clear Channel, said late Monday that Clear Channel also will appeal the verdict.

"We're disappointed in the outcome of the trial, an outcome that we believe does not fully take into account all the facts of this complex case," he said. "From the time that Clear Channel Airports prevailed in a competitive bidding process in Atlanta, we have conducted the advertising business at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in

keeping with the same high standards of service and delivery that mark our work at numerous other airports around the country. Clear Channel will be evaluating all its options and intends to vigorously appeal its verdict."

Said Billy Corey, the owner of the winning company, "It was a long, hard fight. Justice finally prevailed." Corey also said he plans to bid on a new airport advertising contract if and when the city sends out a new bid proposal request.

Corey Airport attorney Jeffrey R. Harris declared himself "proud of my client. He decided he would fight City Hall and he won. He exposed corruption and he did it on his own dime. ... Taxpayers ought to be mad if [the city] appeals."

Corey has claimed for eight years the process was biased in favor of Clear Channel. Clear Channel, its predecessor company and Fouch have jointly held the airport advertising contract since 1980, when airport officials awarded it without a bid. The contract expired in 1997 and has been on month-to-month status ever since.

The jury rendered its verdict at the end of a two-week trial in which Harris and partner Darren W. Penn accused the city of colluding with Clear Channel, one of the world's largest advertising firms, and Fouch, a longtime friend of the late mayor and his daughter's godmother, in violation of city procurement rules. The lawyers said Clear Channel and Fouch secured a sweetheart deal that has cost the city more than $15 million in lost revenue and that has remained in place despite efforts by at least one former airport official to put the contract out for a new bid.

Defense attorneys, which included teams of lawyers from Alston & Bird, King & Spalding and Smith, Gambrell & Russell, have countered that Billy Corey's billboard company lost a 2002 bid for the airport advertising business because his credentials and experience in airport advertising at a single airport in Columbus and that of his minority partner, Fulton County magistrate judge Maureen G. Malone, fell dramatically short of the track record Clear Channel had in 15 of the nation's largest airports and Fouch's as the owner of a Beverly Hills public relations firm.

The trial is the culmination of eight years of litigation by Corey Airports, which began its fight against the city shortly after it narrowly lost the 2002 bid. Under the terms of the contract, the city leases space at the airport to a contractor who installs billboards and, in turn, leases those billboards to advertisers. A percentage of the advertising revenues are paid to the city as rent.

After Corey began fighting the city's decision to award the new contract to Clear Channel, the city allowed Clear Channel's 1980 contract to remain in place. But in 2006, the airport's then-manager Benjamin R. DeCosta pressured Clear Channel to raise its monthly rent payments to the city and insisted that the company pay the city an additional $1.7 million or he would issue a new bid proposal for the stalled contract.

In closing arguments Friday, Harris told the jury that trial witnesses had revealed "the seedy, seamy side of how contracts out at the airport get into people's possession."

The trial, he said, was about whether the city of Atlanta and airport officials treated bidders for city business, and the $150 million airport advertising contract in particular, fairly.

"They didn't," he said.

Harris pointed to a number of anomalies in the way the city has managed the Clear Channel contract. Foremost among them, he said, was the city's decision not to enforce a clause in Clear Channel's contract that mandated a 125 percent increase in its monthly rent if the contract expired and was extended from month to month. For 13 years, he told the jury, the city declined to collect those additional payments, which now top $15.6 million, he said.

Harris also challenged the testimony of an airport official who insisted that the city only enforced monetary penalties against airport concessionaires that it wanted to remove from the airport, not concessionaires with whom it wanted to continue to do business.

"The city elected not to enforce the terms of its own contract," Harris told the jury. DeCosta and Kyle Mastin, head of airport concessions, "had no authority to waive those provisions," he said. "That's strong evidence of favoritism."

Harris also pointed to correspondence between Fouch and Clear Channel that he said suggested attempts to unfairly influence city officials to leave the 1980 contract in place. In one letter, Fouch asked for $50,000 to place in a separate fund for use "when I need to take selective actions deemed necessary" to keep the contract in place.

Clear Channel never forwarded Fouch the requested funds, Harris said. Her original majority partner, James Riley, "laughed it off" when he took the witness stand, saying he had assumed it was "for candy and flowers," Harris told the jury.

Harris also raised questions about the continuity of the airport contract, which first expired in 1995. Then-airport manager Angela Gittens, in a deposition, testified that she had intended to put the contract out for bid but that then-Mayor Bill Campbell objected, telling her that Fouch was a friend.

After Campbell refused to renew Gittens' contract and replaced her with DeCosta, the new airport manager did nothing for three years to address the month-to-month status of what was then a $150 million contract, Harris said, because the contract was "not on his radar screen."

Only after negative media reports surfaced in 2002 that criticized a number of long-expired airport concession contracts did the city issue its first bid proposal for the airport advertising contract, Harris said.

During the bidding process, Harris argued that although Clear Channel, Corey and a third bidder were supposed to have based their bid—anticipated annual revenues and the guaranteed monthly rent it would pay the city—on 327 advertising locations at the airport, notes from a meeting of executives from Clear Channel, the city and the airport showed that city officials appeared to have exclusively promised Clear Channel more locations without Corey's knowledge. Those notes also suggested that Clear Channel— in apparent violation of the city's procurement code—had been apprised of Corey's monthly rental bid, which was at least 10 percent higher than Clear Channel's.

Other clauses in the bid proposal also favored Clear Channel and potentially penalized other bidders as much as $400,000 if they were awarded the bid, Harris told the jury.

Although Harris argued that Corey had held major billboard advertising contracts at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium and the Georgia International Horse Park in Conyers and that the airport advertising contract "wasn't rocket science," he suggested that if Clear Channel and Fouch had "just fought fairly, they might have won."

Instead, he said, their fear was that, if the contract were bid fairly, "It was possible that Clear Channel and Corey might lose this thing."

In closing arguments, Fouch's attorney, Edward H. Wasmuth Jr. of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, defended her as "an honest businesswoman with a long track record who has played by the rules." Corey's allegations that there was a "corrupt agreement," he said, "are absolutely unproven. … There was not one bit of evidence of any slush fund, of any payment of slush funds. There was zero evidence of this kind of corruption."

Michael D. Kenny, an Alston & Bird attorney defending the city, told the jury, "The only reason that Corey lost was because Corey faced better competition." The four city evaluators who reviewed the 2002 bid proposals and awarded the bid to Clear Channel "evaluated the competing proposals independently and fairly," he said. "Clear Channel lost fair and square."

But Corey, he said, "refuses to accept defeat gracefully. They wanted to blame the umpire, and blame their competitors. They lost in a rookie season against a seasoned competitor fairly and squarely."

Andy Peters contributed to this article