All Alan Levan wanted in the beginning, he says, was an apology from ABC News for a 1991 segment of 20/20. He thought it portrayed him as a shifty operator who bailed out his Fort Lauderdale-based savings and loan at the expense of investors in a complex bonds-for-property real estate deal. When ABC ran a clarification that didn't satisfy him, he sued for libel. Last December, after a bitter six-week trial, he won a $10 million jury award, the largest for libel in Florida history.

The fairness or lack thereof in Levan's real-estate dealings, which had been the focus of 20/20's cautionary tale "Too Good To Be True," was not the focus of the libel trial. Remarkably, Levan, after a jury verdict against him in 1992, had settled a class-action suit brought by some of the deal's investors, paying them $8 million - but the libel jurors weren't allowed to hear about it. Federal Judge C. Clyde Atkins ruled that because the settlement included nullifying the verdict, discussion of the earlier case would be prejudicial to Levan. Instead, when the eleven members of the libel jury agreed that the "gist" of the ABC program was false and broadcast with "knowledge of its falsity," they had clearly focused more on reporting techniques than on the core content of the segment.

 In doing so, they reflected a public attitude - and a new reality for TV journalists: what you may think is small stuff can come back to haunt you, and great care must be taken even if the subject of your report seems libel-proof. What the jury condemned was the way John Stossel, a longtime consumer reporter noted for an aggressive style, and his veteran producer, William Willson, put together the fifteen-minute segment.

For example, Alan Fein, Levan's lawyer, pounced on one of the opening lines of the broadcast, an announcer's comment that "the man behind it wouldn't talk to us." In fact, Levan and Willson had had a six-hour conversation. But it was off the record. That meant, ABC argued, it couldn't be used; the jury wasn't swayed.

Another scene seemed to show Levan getting a severe lecture from a congressman during a House hearing on real estate deals like Levan's. But evidence showed that Levan wasn't even in the room, and the congressman's comment that he was looking forward to Levan's testimony was cut from the televised segment.

Floyd Abrams, ABC's attorney, insists that all the information ABC gathered from independent financial experts indicated that what Levan offered investors was a "lousy deal" and that ABC's report was basically valid. He has asked that the $10 million award be set aside and a new trial ordered or that the award be reduced, because Levan didn't prove "actual malice" and the evidence was "insufficient to establish that the gist of the broadcast was false." Otherwise, he says, he will appeal the verdict, partly because of the judge's refusal to let ABC introduce testimony on the earlier case against Levan.

Joseph Angotti, a former NBC executive who is communications studies chairman at the University of Miami, says the case may force the media to "back away from questionable techniques," adding: "The news business has become more sensational and more titillating and less responsible. And then everyone acts surprised when there is backlash from the public."

Would it have made a difference if the jury had heard of the earlier verdict against Levan? Its foreman, Wilson Florez, doesn't think so. "ABC," he told the Miami Business Review, "still didn't report in a very balanced manner."

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