Florida Jury Returns $50 Million to Wife of Ex-CEO of Marvel Entertainment

Jordan Cohen, partner at Wicker Smith and attorney for Harold Peerenboom, indicated his client may appeal the verdict.

By Annie Mayne
November 24, 2025 at 01:24 PM

A Palm Beach jury awarded $50 million to Laura Perlmutter, the wife of former Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter, finding that neighbor Harold Peerenboom defamed her and tried to obtain the couple’s DNA to link them to anonymous hate mail circulating in their upscale community.

The Perlmutters were able to prove to jurors that Peerenboom and William Douberly—formerly an in-house attorney for Chubb & Son Inc., a division of Federal Insurance Co.—had plotted the swiping of the Perlmutters’ DNA from water bottles and paper during a 2013 deposition in a separate lawsuit against Peerenboom.

“The defense in the trial was because the Perlmutters have achieved wealth, and they’re friends with Donald Trump, that they don’t have human emotions, and that Laurie Perlmutter’s reputation didn’t matter and that Ike Perlmutter’s loss of enjoyment of life didn’t matter,” said Josh Dubin of Dubin Law, who represented the Perlmutters. “The jury was offended by that.”

The neighborhood spat began over the management of a Palm Beach tennis center. The conflict escalated with the circulation of hate mail about Peerenboom, which led to litigation between him and the tennis program manager, Karen Donnelly.

Peerenboom was convinced the Perlmutters, who paid Donnelly’s legal fees, were responsible for the hate mail. He hired a private forensic firm to illicitly collect the Perlmutters’ DNA, which was tested against the mail that had accused Peerenboom of murder, pedophilia and other crimes.

Even after results definitively proved that Laura Perlmutter was not connected to the mail, and suspect was arrested in the case, Peerenboom continued to publicly name her as the culprit and pursue legal action against her.

The jury hit Peerenboom with a $50 million verdict for defaming Laura Perlmutter, plus additional damages for loss of enjoyment of life for her and her husband. Douberly must pay $36,000 for abuse of process and civil conspiracy.

The total verdict, handed down Friday, is $50,036,011, said Dubin who was brought onto the case by the late Roy Black. He tried the case with Jared Lopez of Black Srebnick and with the help of Gregory Wyckoff of Dubin Law. He noted that the $11 was tacked on as nominal damages for conversion.

In an emailed statement, Jordan Cohen, partner at Wicker Smith and attorney for Peerenboom, indicated his client may appeal the verdict.

“While we continue to have the utmost faith in the jury system, we take issue with their verdict on the defamation claim where they were invited into error and rendered a verdict unsupported by the evidence presented at trial. We do not litigate matters in the press and will reserve our post-verdict and appellate arguments for the Courts,” Cohen said.

Steven Rothman, shareholder and board member at Jones Foster and attorney for Douberly, was not available to provide comment by publishing time.

A separate vicarious liability case is still pending against Chubb, Dubin said. As is a malicious prosecution case against the law firm formerly known as Kasowitz Benson Torres, which represented Peerenboom in a since-dismissed suit against Laura Perlmutter.

“They were not involved in the collection of the DNA … but it’s our contention that they were fully aware of the exclusion of Laurie Perlmutter, that they continued to press a false narrative, that they had no right to continue with the lawsuit, that they helped actively hide the existence of the true perpetrator,” Dubin said.

Dubin said even after Kasowitz filed a complaint against the suspected perpetrator, the firm push a theory that the Perlmutters had orchestrated the mailing of the letters. He added that had Peerenboom’s suit against the Perlmutters been successful, the Kasowitz firm would have been entitled to a 10% success fee.

Dubin said Lara Perlmutter’s case against the Kasowitz firm is expected to go to trial in 2026.

Mark Bideau, shareholder at Greenberg Traurig and attorney for the Kasowitz law firm, did not return a request for comment.

There’s also still a chance that Douberly and Peerenboom will be hit with punitive damages, as the Supreme Court of Florida is considering a motion from the Perlmutters to allow a separate trial to assess those. For now, the verdict has been vindicating for the Perlmutters, who have been involved in litigation with Peerenboom for more than a decade.

“They’re tough people, and they both cried when the verdict came in, and I cried with them,” Dubin said. “This consumed their lives.”

Dubin, who works as a post-conviction attorney and has been active in the Innocence Project, said there is a “silver lining” to the harm the Perlmutters suffered. The Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice, run by Dubin at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law, is now in its third year. The center trains law students in the proper use of scientific evidence with a focus on how “junk science” can lead to wrongful convictions.

“This case was not just important for Laurie and Ike Perlmutter; this case was important for forensic science,” Dubin said. “DNA is the holy grail when it comes to all of these disciplines of forensic science, and it needs to be treated with sanctity and it needs to be treated in a way that we don’t put in the hands of people … that don’t have the training and expertise to be involved in the analysis.”