who pays the winner on people's court
The People's Court The losing party does not actually need to pay the judgment, as such. Instead (as is stated in the disclaimer at the end of each show), both parties are paid from a fund (set up by Ralph Edwards-Stu Billett Productions). This fund was based on the amount of the lawsuit claim, but an exact formula was not stated. The fund was to be first divided equally, then any monetary judgment ordered was subtracted from the loser's half (and presumably both halves in the case of cross judgments). Each litigant received at least what remained of their half in shows concluding with that disclaimer.
American game show winnings records Since the genre began, many shows have offered prizes of large sums of money to contestants; Teddy Nadler set the original monetary winnings record of $264,000 during his appearance on The $64,000 Challenge in 1957. Nadler was not surpassed until 1980, when Thom McKee won $312,700 on Tic-Tac-Dough. In 1999, John Carpenter won $1,000,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, becoming the first person to win a seven-figure prize on an American game show. Since then, many players have gone on to win that amount and even surpassed it. As of 2015, Brad Rutter is the highest-earning American game show contestant of all time, having accumulated a total of $4,555,102. He succeeded Ken Jennings as the highest-earning contestant by virtue of his victory on May 16, 2014, in the Jeopardy! Battle of the Decades tournament.