The ex-lover of a Northern California man did not injure his wife by providing him with crack cocaine during their two-year affair, a jury has ruled in a case of sex, drugs and a law that makes drug dealers liable for the injuries they cause.

The defense verdict means the wife of Marc Siciliano, 53, of San Rafael will not recover any damages under California's Drug Dealer Liability Act (DDLA). Cynthia Siciliano, 46, alleged Jodie Graham-Potts, 49, of Petaluma was liable for the “willful, reckless, or negligent actions” of her husband related to his cocaine use.

Cynthia Siciliano's attorney asked the jury to award her at least $100,000 in economic and emotional distress damages. “What happened in this marriage is more than just an affair,” Robert Diskint of San Rafael argued. “It is a husband being destroyed by crack cocaine, provided to him by Ms. Graham-Potts.”

Marc Siciliano, a former minor league baseball catcher, has reunited with his wife and testified against Graham-Potts, saying she introduced him to crack and “cooked” it for him because he didn't know how. He described smoking crack as a “full-body orgasm” that caused him to mistreat his wife and nine-year-old daughter.

The plaintiffs' evidence included a homemade sex-and-drugs videotape in which Graham-Potts lights a drug pipe and offers it to Marc Siciliano. “Let's get this party started,” she says.

But during a 10-day trial in Sonoma County Superior Court, Graham-Potts said Marc Siciliano was already using drugs when she met him in 2003 and would show up for their trysts with a briefcase containing drugs. Her attorney argued she was not responsible for any suffering resulting from their shared drug use.

“The Drug Dealer Liability Act was never meant for this sort of action,” Lisa L. Gygax of Forestville tells On Point. “It was clearly a revenge situation wherein the wife and her lawyer father sought to punish her husband and the defendant, who was waiting for the husband to divorce his wife and marry her.”

Graham-Potts says the trial was a "humiliating experience" and she is hoping Cynthia Siciliano does not appeal. "Let the healing begin for all involved," she urged.

California passed the DDLA in 1997 after a lobbying campaign by the late actor Carroll O'Connor, who had blamed a drug dealer for his son's death. “A person who sold, administered, or furnished an illegal controlled substance” to a drug user, the law states, is liable for “injury resulting from” the use of the drug.

At least 13 states now have such laws but they have rarely been used, in part because plaintiffs or their relatives have to admit to using drugs. In 2007, the South Dakota Supreme Court found a pharmacy was not liable under that state's law for the death of a man who overdosed on prescription morphine he had picked up for a disabled friend. Schafer v. Shopko Stores, 741 N.W.2d 758.

A similar lawsuit against a pharmacy -- Whittemore v. Owens Healthcare-Retail Pharmacy –- is pending before a California appeals court.

Graham-Potts and Marc Siciliano began their affair after he hired her as a driver for his limousine service. They broke up after he was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia and, during a fight, threw a water bottle at her, breaking her nose.

A few months later, Cynthia Siciliano's nephew discovered the videotape in the couple's pool house and she confronted her husband, who admitted the affair. She filed her lawsuit in 2008 after consulting with her father, attorney Lee E. Shroyer of Mill Valley, also naming her daughter as a plaintiff.

While her husband was using drugs supplied by Graham-Potts, she alleged in the complaint, he abandoned her “for days at a time,” had “violent fits of anger,” was unavailable for medical emergencies and caused her to develop stress-related shingles and insomnia. “He became a monster,” she testified.

But under cross-examination, Marc Siciliano described the hedonistic lifestyle he led before meeting Graham-Potts, including using drugs with others at his home while his wife was at work. When Cynthia found stray bags of methamphetamine in the house, he told her they belonged to a friend.

“My client is not proud of what happened,” Gygax said in her opening statement. “But this public flogging ... it's just revenge.” After the verdict was announced, a juror told The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa there wasn't clear evidence that Graham-Potts provided drugs to Marc Siciliano.

In passing the DDLA, California lawmakers cited the need to compensate “those who have suffered harm as a result of the marketing and distribution of illegal controlled substances.” But the Siciliano case shows the danger that the law will be misused as a “heart balm” by the scorned spouses of drug users.

Like most states, California does not allow “heart balm” or alienation of affections actions.

By Matthew Heller
2/5/10