NASCAR Cup Series: Greg Biffle now owes ex-wife $250,000 more

The ex-wife of former NASCAR Cup Series driver Greg Biffle is set to receive an additional $250,000 from the 19-time Cup Series race winner.

Early last week, the ex-wife of former NASCAR Cup Series driver Greg Biffle was awarded $1 in damages after the 48-year-old Biffle was found guilty of invading her privacy by a jury.

Biffle’s ex-wife, Nicole Lunders, reportedly sought $9 million in damages against him for secretly recording her in her bedroom and bathroom for two years, so she only collected 0.0001111111% of what she wanted from him.

However, Biffle was not completely off the hook by paying his ex-wife $1 in actual damages. Now the 19-time Cup Series race winner owes her an additional $250,000 in punitive damages, meaning she is set to collect a total of $250,001 from him.

A North Carolina jury ruled that Biffle violated the privacy of his ex-wife by having security cameras installed in their bedroom and bathroom areas.

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John Buric, Biffle’s attorney, stated that the former Cup Series driver agreed to the awarding of punitive damages to avoid a mistrial.

Biffle agreed to this as a result of the fact that the jury was deadlocked when deciding whether or not to award punitive damages. A mistrial would have resulted in an entirely new trial.

Punitive damages of $500,000 were awarded by the jury, but North Carolina law limits punitive damages to the higher of two amounts: $250,000 or three times the actual damages, which, in this case, were just $1. Obviously, $250,000 is higher than $3, so that is what Biffle owes his ex-wife in punitive damages, bringing his total amount owed to her to $250,001.

Here is what Buric had to say about the matter, according to ESPN.

"“When someone asks for $9 million and gets $1 [in actual damages], that’s a pretty big victory for the person that only has to pay $1 as opposed to $8,999,999 more of those dollars. Knowing the jury was [hung] on the no liability on punitive is a great feeling. Sometimes you have to make the tough calls — when you do the math on it and do the economics on it and you know you’re capped at $250,000, you’re substantially better off than starting all over and paying two or three times of that in legal fees and having all the risk.”"

The lawyer for Biffle’s ex-wife, Amy Simpson, has stated that she and her client are planning to appeal the amount of damages awarded based on the “judge’s ruling on evidence they were not allowed to submit during trial”, according to ESPN, which discusses the entirety of the trial in more depth here.

Biffle retired from the Cup Series following the conclusion of the 2016 season. He competed in 510 races over the course of his 15-year Cup Series career, of which 503 took place throughout his 14 seasons as a full-time driver. In those 14 seasons, he missed just one race in the 2003 season.

Biffle racked up 19 victories, 92 top five finishes, 175 top 10 finishes and 13 pole positions in over the course of the 510 races in his Cup Series career. He led 5,844 of the 145,561 laps in which he competed in his 510 career starts.

In the 2005 season, Biffle recorded a career-high finish of second place in the championship standings. This was also the season during which he set his career-highs in victories, top five finishes, top 10 finishes, laps completed and laps led. He secured six victories, 15 top five finishes and 21 top 10 finishes. He completed a career-high 10,521 laps and led a career-high 1,322 of them.

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What are your thoughts on the recent ruling that will require Greg Biffle to pay his ex-wife $250,000 in punitive damages in addition to the $1 that he already owes her in actual damages? Should he be required to pay her more or less, or is this total amount of $250,001 fair?

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