The owner of a Dothan wedding venue is asking for a new trial after a jury ordered him to pay a former employee $500,000 after finding he defamed her multiple times after she was arrested on bogus theft charges.

John Donaldson, owner of Windmill Station, listed several reasons for requesting a new trial or having the $500,000 judgment altered or vacated, including his belief that the judgment given to Gayla White was excessive and that his attorney suffered an illness that affected his performance during the trial.

Evidence at the trial does not support the March judgment, Donaldson’s attorney, John White, contended in a motion for a new trial filed in April.

The verdict also “so greatly exceeds any verdict consistent with the evidence of damages that a failure to set aside or reduce it would result in the deprivation of Defendant’s rights provided by the United States and Alabama Constitutions,” White’s motion reads.

Houston County Circuit Court Judge Henry “Butch” Binford set a hearing on the motion for June 21.

White, a former marketing manager, event coordinator and bartender at Windmill Station, worked at the Dothan wedding venue from September 2016 to mid-June 2018.

In her complaint against Windmill Station Donaldson, White said she repeatedly asked for tax documents from December and turned in her two weeks’ notice to on June 6, 2018, when Donaldson became “angry and threatening.”

At the last event White worked at Windmill Station, Donaldson “grabbed her arm and told her he would press charges for stealing if she did not return a calendar” that belonged to her boss, the suit stated.

On July 9, 2018, White was arrested on charges of stealing $2,700 and booked into the Dothan City Jail. She was arrested again roughly a week later, the lawsuit alleged.

From her initial arrest until she was cleared of the charges, Donaldson “continued to make false and defamatory comments about” White, including calling her a thief and other defamatory statements that were aired on and printed in Dothan media outlets.

White suffered, and continues to suffer, “embarrassment, great worry, shame, humiliation, loss of sleep, anxiety, nervousness, physical and mental suffering, anguish, and fright” due to the false allegations, the lawsuit stated, including fear that she would never be employed again.

She requested $1 million in compensatory damages, with the Houston County jury awarding her half that amount.

The jury also denied her request for $3 million in punitive damages.