" We are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this Court."
It was a nice way of telling them to get lost.
The $25 million award that had been given to them four years earlier by an Oakland County Circuit Court jury should never have happened.
"They get zero. It was like there never was a trial," said attorney Ven Johnson, who worked the case with Geoffrey Fieger.
Frank Amedure Jr., brother of the slain man, said he wasn't ever counting on counting that money.
"The day they handed the verdict down, I had already been prepped," Frank said last week.
The prepping? Don't spend the money until you have it in your hand.
But there was a trial, and everyone knows that.
For six weeks, in the courtroom of Judge Gene Schnelz, anyone with cable television and a hankering to see Court TV could witness the talk show industry in the cross hairs.
The family of Scott Amedure and Fieger blamed the industry for what they believed was an ambush - Scott's killing by Jonathan Schmitz three days after they appeared on a program about about same-sex crushes on "The Jenny Jones Show."
Schmitz was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25-50 years in prison.
But the Amedures tried to exact a measure of satisfaction from the show and its media giant distributor, Warner Bros.
For four years, Fieger and attorneys for the show battled to see if the case would even go forward. The key issue was whether the show had a duty to protect Scott three days after the show. Was it reasonably foreseeable that Schmitz would kill Scott because of the show?
The show said no.
But the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court - in pretrial rulings - seemed content to let the case proceed to trial and to a jury.
"The panel that denied leave said, 'This isn't even close,' or they wouldn't have let this go to trial," said Johnson, who worked on the case for a year and a half before trial.
"Do you think they would have let this go to trial?"
In a 2-1 decision, the appellate court struck down the award.
Johnson and Fieger contend that only after the verdict came in did a different appeals court panel take an interest in case.
Attorney James P. Feeney,who represented the show, said the appeals court frequently turns down pretrial challenges without ruling on the merits of the claim.
The appeals court and its boss did exactly what it should have done, Feeney said.
Fieger's firm was left withlittle more than the taste of a monstrous legal bill it ate for the Amedure's case.
The Amedures have nothing but an aching bitterness and wonderment about whether they really got their day in court.
"You have a right to a jury trial - or do you?"
Johnson said. "They are disappointed and let down by the entire
judicial system. They feel like they've been victimized a second time."