Even Jury's $2.17 Million Can't Cure Jeffrey Katzenberg's Heartsickness
It's been a day full of big wins for the billionaires of DreamWorks SKG. Earlier, we pointed out that the California Coastal Commission granted David Geffen a much-needed ten-foot buffer between his Malibu Gay Mafia stronghold and the sun-worshipping Untouchables who dare to splay their unsightly forms upon his beloved, but distressingly public, stretch of Carbon Beach. Now word comes that bite-sized mogul and two-time intramural DreamWorks Animation wet t-shirt champion Jeffrey Katzenberg has tasted $2.17 million worth of bittersweet victory in a lawsuit against the rubber-pushing villains of Goodyear, whose faulty, leaking heating hoses did grievous damage to his Park City-adjacent vacation home:
"I have this treasure of mine, and I realize now it's flawed - significantly flawed. It breaks my heart that I have to rip this house apart," Katzenberg said of his 13,000-square-foot home in Deer Valley during testimony in U.S. District Court last week. "In my opinion it will never be the same." [...]
Katzenberg testified that replacing the hoses in his home will be costly because the floors and walls are finished with rare and expensive materials that will be destroyed. He estimated the market value of his house at more than $28 million.
It's not hard to see why a jury would sympathize with Katzenberg's (pictured here partaking in the kind of frivolity he'll never again enjoy) moving evocation of the despair he'll now feel each time he's forced to spend time in his quaint—but now tragically tainted—$28 million chalet. He'll forever be robbed of the comfort it once granted him when he was badly in need of a quiet place to recover from the bustle of Sundance, knowing that as he meditatively wiggles his toes upon the handmade area rugs woven from the hair of tow-headed Mormon children, they're not the original ones he commissioned during his mountain sanctum's construction.
[Photo: Getty Images]