SAN FRANCISCO — A Superior Court jury slammed ex–Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra on Friday, finding him liable for nearly all charges brought against him by his former bandmates.

Damages stemming from charges that Biafra's label, Alternative Tentacles, failed to promote the group's back catalog and failed to pay back royalties, among other complaints, totaled nearly $200,000, including $20,000 in punitive damages.

"It's the ugliest thing I've ever had done to me in my entire life," a disheartened Biafra (born Eric Reed Boucher) said after the verdict was read. "What they're basically doing is punishing me for sticking to the principles of the band and underground and independent culture."

Guitarist East Bay Ray (born Ray Pepperell) and bassist Klaus Flouride (Geoffrey Lyall) maintain that they and drummer D.H. Peligro (Darren Henley) are the true guardians of the band's democratic values, but they admit that the legal triumph was bittersweet.

" 'Happy' is not the word, because we didn't want it to have to get this far, and we weren't out to defeat Biafra at all," Flouride said outside the courtroom. "[In an earlier press report] Biafra was saying that it's absurd that it has to be settled in a court, [that] this is a stupid way to settle things, and it's stupid that it had to get this far, that it had to be settled here. ... We tried our darndest to settle it."

Ray said, "He just needed to talk to us."

Surprised By Verdict

Peligro was not at court to hear the verdict, but the other bandmembers and their attorneys spent the morning pacing the halls of the San Francisco Superior Courthouse and wandering in and out of the courtroom where the trial has been held for close to three weeks, waiting for the jury — in its third day of deliberation — to come out with a decision.

Biafra was visibly stunned as ruling after ruling was read against him by the court clerk.

The normally outspoken singer quietly answered attorney David Phillips' inquiries into his personal finances as Phillips asked the jury to award his clients more than $170,000 in additional punitive damages. They awarded only $20,000.

A handful of people — including old friends of the entire band — sat in the court gallery to hear the verdict. Most were surprised at the sweeping vote, particularly the jury finding that Biafra and the label had failed to promote the band's back catalog. Several witnesses, including Offspring frontman Dexter Holland, had testified that record companies generally do not promote the back catalog of defunct bands.

Biafra holds that his high-profile activities serve to promote the band. Ray, Flouride and Peligro said they believe that Biafra should have prioritized promotion of the Dead Kennedys catalog over his solo releases.

Biafra was awarded $5,000 in his countersuit against Ray, in which he accused the guitarist of taking a portion of the band's royalties without his consent, as a fee for managing the business side of the band's four-man formal partnership, Decay Music.

The jury decided that Biafra and Ray were liable for fraud, as well as for breaches of fiduciary (partnership) duty, but only Biafra was found to have committed the acts with malicious intent. Biafra said he plans to appeal.

In addition, the jury found that Decay Music owns the band's catalog, which includes such sarcastic punk classics such as "Kill the Poor" (RealAudio excerpt) and "California Uber Alles." Biafra had argued that the songwriter for each track owned that work.

Future Decisions

Judge Anne Bouliane will have the final say on the ownership issue and two other points decided as an advisory by the jury. Bouliane is expected to rule Wednesday on ownership of the catalog, whether the Decay partnership is run by majority rule or unanimous consent and whether Biafra was given "reasonable notice" of a September 1998 meeting at which the other three partners voted without him to terminate Alternative Tentacles' license to manufacture and sell the band's music. The jury voted in favor of Ray, Peligro and Flouride on all three issues.

While Biafra's lawyer argued that majority rule would give the other members the power to override his vote on future decisions, Ray and Flouride said the partners plan to make decisions democratically.

Biafra disagreed. "Obviously if they take [the catalog] somewhere else, I'm gonna have no involvement," Biafra said. "The last thing I wanted was for Dead Kennedys to be the ugliest memory of my whole life."