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Contracts Keyed to Whaley
Kolodziej v. Mason
Citation:
United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit, 2014, 774 F.3d 736Facts
James Cheney Mason (Defendant) was representing a criminal defendant, Nelson Serrano, accused of murdering his former business partner, as well as the son, daughter, and son-in-law of a third business partner. Defendant was interviewed on the NBC news program Dateline about the case, and he refuted the prosecution’s theory of the case, claiming that his client could not have committed the murders because he was on a business trip several hundred miles away in Atlanta, Georgia at the time the murders occurred in central Florida. The prosecution argued that he committed the murders in a ten-hour span, traveling under several aliases, flying from Atlanta to Orlando, renting a car to drive to Bartow, Florida and committing the murders. Defendant alleged that he would pay “anybody” a million dollars to show him evidence of his client making the prosecution’s supposed route to commit the murders. The interview aired after Defendant’s client was convicted by a jury and sentenced to death. Dustin S. Kolodziej (Plaintiff) was a law student who viewed the interview and accepted defendant’s challenge, understanding his statement to be a unilateral offer, and proceeded to videotape himself successfully making the trip.
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