It was a challenge too good to pass up: $1 million to prove a high-profile defense lawyer wrong.
Attorney James Cheney Mason put it out there on “Dateline NBC.” When Nelson Serrano was convicted of killing four people in Bartow, Fla., in 1997, the prosecution’s case had hinged on a 28-minute window. In that amount of time, Serrano is said to have gotten off an airplane at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and made it to a La Quinta Inn, three miles away, where he appeared on security camera footage.
“I challenge anybody to show me. I’ll pay them a million dollars if they can do it,” Mason said during an interview with “Dateline NBC” in 2006 after a jury’s finding that his client maneuvered his way through the world’s busiest airport and made it to a motel off I-85 in under 30 minutes.
“Twenty-eight minutes,” the Orlando attorney continued, with certainty. “Can’t happen. Didn’t happen.”
Dustin Kolodziej, then a law student in Texas, took Mason’s words as more than a challenge. He saw a verbal contract — a televised verbal contract.
So Kolodziej did just what the attorney said wasn’t possible. He got off a plane, walked through the busy airport, into a parking garage, then got behind the wheel of his parked car and drove to the motel in just 19 minutes. The whole while, his camcorder recorded his movements.
Then Kolodziej sent a letter to Mason — asking for his promised $1 million.
Mason told the enterprising student of the law that it was just a joke, a figure of speech. Later, when Kolodziej insisted, Mason told him to get lost. The attorney even warned that he considered what the student was doing to be attempted extortion and said he would act accordingly.
But Kolodziej has refused to go away. He still wants his $1 million and has filed a lawsuit. A federal case to be exact.
Kolodziej, who lives in the San Antonio area, is alleging breach of contract in the suit filed late last month in U.S. District Court in Atlanta.
Kolodziej, through his attorney, declined to comment on the case. Mason did not return telephone calls.
“What this case boils down to is would a reasonable person believe that this is legitimate,” said David George, Kolodziej’s lawyer. “Think about the context. He’s on ‘Dateline,’ national TV, and his client is on death row. That is not a joking context.”
Kolodziej, then a student at the South Texas College of Law, had watched the spectacular trial on Court TV between classes and researching papers. When the “Dateline” episode appeared, he watched with interest and was taken by Mason’s assuredness.
The offer of $1 million is “the quintessential challenge amount, the hole-in-one challenge, the half-court toss,” said George. “I think a reasonable person would believe it. I know Dustin did.”
Mason has called the suit “ridiculous.”
“I’m really unconcerned about it,” Mason said last year. “When it’s over, somebody or some group of people out there are going to have to face the consequences of filing such a false, stupid lawsuit.”
It started when Mason went on national TV and insisted that Serrano, a partner in a Florida manufacturing plant involved in a bitter dispute, was not in Florida when three men and a woman were shot to death, execution style, at the business. The defense lawyer argued Serrano was in Atlanta that day, holed up in the La Quinta, suffering from a migraine. A security camera caught him at the Atlanta motel around noon and again about 10 p.m. that night.
Prosecutors said Serrano was simply concocting an ingenious alibi and had traveled to Florida and back to commit the murders.
“From there to be on the videotape in 28 minutes. Not possible. Not possible,” Mason said. “I challenge anybody to show me, and guess what? Did they bring any evidence to say someone made that route [to Florida and back]? State’s burden of proof. If they can do it, I’ll challenge them. I’ll pay them a million dollars if they can do it.”
On Dec. 10, 2007, a year after the show and almost exactly 10 years after the killings, Kolodziej tracked Serrano’s alleged murderous route. Serrano, using an alias, flew from Atlanta to Orlando, picked up a rental car (again, using an alias), drove 66 miles south to the murder scene in Bartow. He then drove 50 miles to the airport in Tampa, disposed of the car, flew to Atlanta, got his parked rental car, then drove to the motel on Old National Highway.
Kolodziej’s video includes herky-jerky walks through airport terminals, long drives through the Central Florida flatlands to a backdrop of classic rock radio and lingering close-ups of landmarks to prove where he is. There are also frequent close-ups of the date and time on his cellphone to document a time line.
Kolodziej never appears on camera and is heard only a couple of times asking for directions and once reflexively thanking a machine at a parking garage after it thanks him. Kolodziej did not perform a practice run for his trip, George said.
“This is the kind of thing only a law student would do,” George said with a laugh. “It reads like a question on a law school test. This case will likely be studied in law school.”
A famous contract case that is often studied is Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc., which came about after a 1996 Pepsi commercial that featured items — such as jackets, shirts and sunglasses — that could be gotten for “Pepsi Points.” The ad ended with a teen flying a Harrier jet he received by redeeming 7 million such points.
A 21-year-old business student discovered that such points could be purchased for 10 cents, so he got together investors and sent a $700,000 check to the company, asking for his $23 million fighter plane. A judge later agreed with the company’s contention that the ad was humor, not a contract.
“No objective person could reasonably have concluded that the commercial actually offered consumers a Harrier jet,” she wrote.
The Kolodziej case does have the ability to be a classic “prove-me-wrong” case, said Val Ricks, a professor of South Texas College of Law, who is an expert on contracts and remembers Kolodziej as “an enthusiastic student.”
Ricks said Mason’s claims were “partly a boast, partly a challenge.” But, he said, “holding people to account [for statements] has social value.”
Can Kolodziej win? “From what I’ve seen, he has a chance,” Ricks said. “Lots of these cases happen, and they settle all the time.”
