Florida Billionaire’s DNA-Nabbing Punitive Damages Claim Tossed

The clandestine collection of DNA in a feud between a Trump-backing entertainment billionaire and a Canadian millionaire wasn’t sufficiently backed-up by evidence to support punitive damages, a Florida court ruled in a landmark civil procedure decision Wednesday.

The case centers around a bizarre dispute over a defamatory letter campaign, in which Harold Peerenboom, founder of the Mandrake Management executive search firm, was wrongly accused of child molestation and murder. To prove the identity of the sender, Peerenboom and his attorney allegedly took the DNA of former Marvel Entertainment executive Issac “Ike” Perlmutter and his wife from documents and plastic bottles ...