text: Joe Francis $20 MILLION LOSER In Steve Wynn Lawsuit 
   
   Exclusive Details 
   
   just got hammered by a jury in's defamation lawsuit -- the jury socked him with a $20 million verdict.If you recall ... Wynn was suing Francis for defamation, claiming the "" guru made bogus claims that Wynn threatened to have him killed and buried in the desert over a gambling debt.The judge nailed Francis to the tune of $5 mil for statements made to a TMZ producer in a courtroom hallway ... talking smack on Wynn.The jury added $11 mil for defamatory statements Francis made on "Good Morning America."All tolled, the verdict is for $20 mil.The jury will now decide if Francis gets hit with punitive damages .. and that could be an additional $60 mil.Francis is worth a reported $150 million.Francis tells TMZ he believes the judge made 2 reversible and appealable errors -- one of which was allowing Wynn to add the 'GMA' claim at the end of the trial. Francis also believes some of the statements that allegedly constitute defamation were made in a court proceeding where Francis was seeking a restraining order against Wynn and were therefore privileged. ||||| A Los Angeles jury on Monday awarded casino mogul Steve Wynn $20 million, after it found that he had been defamed by "Girls Gone Wild" creator Joe Francis. 
   
   Wynn had sued Francis over the latter's claims that Wynn had threatened to have him killed and buried in the desert. Testifying last week, Wynn called the accusation a "terrible lie" that could potentially hurt his reputation and that of his eponymous company. 
   
   "He's unrepentant, vicious, out-of-control," Wynn said of Francis. 
   
   But since Wynn filed suit in 2010, Francis has maintained that the threat was real. He said music mogul Quincy Jones, his neighbor and a longtime friend of Wynn's, told him that Wynn wanted Francis dead in an email. 
   
   In court, Jones said that Wynn never threatened to kill Francis, and that Jones had never told Francis that Wynn had. 
   
   Francis' team has never produced the email; Wynn said that's because it doesn't exist. 
   
   The Wynn-Francis feud stretches over a number of years and multiple lawsuits. Francis attorney David Houston has suggested that their fraught history is what riled Wynn enough to threaten Francis. 
   
   Francis made the death-threat accusations while warring with Wynn over a roughly $2-million gambling debt Francis had racked up. Francis and Wynn also battled in court over Francis' accusations that he was plied with prostitutes and drugs during his betting spree. (A Nevada judge sided with Wynn in a lawsuit over those claims.) 
   
   In questioning Wynn, Houston tried to prove that the mogul, considered a sort of elder statesman in the gaming industry, was capable of spouting off threats. Houston played part of an interview from the 1980s in which Wynn told TV reporter Meredith Vieira that he'd choke her if she didn't include certain information in her report. 
   
   "I think you heard her laugh," Wynn said. 
   
   "Or gasp," Houston replied. 
   
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   — Harriet Ryan and Ashley Powers 
   
   Photo: Joe Francis, left, and Steve Wynn. Credit: Associated Press file photos
target: – Lots of girls are going to have to go pretty wild to pay off Joe Francis' legal bills: A jury has awarded casino mogul Steve Wynn $20 million in his slander suit against the Girls Gone Wild soft-porn tycoon, reports the Los Angeles Times. Francis had publicly claimed that Wynn threatened to have him killed and buried in the desert over a $2 million gambling debt, but the jury decided that the allegations were false and Wynn had been slandered. The jury will now decide whether to hit Francis with punitive damages, which could be as much as $60 million, TMZ reports.