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From a legal perspective, it was a straightforward case of deceit and misrepresentation.

But from any other perspective, Weerasinghe Turner v. Viveiros was anything but straightforward, as the Sri Lankan plaintiff charged her American husband with bigamy and stealing her virginity.

"[The] judge indicated that he'd never seen anything quite like this," said lead plaintiff's lawyer Patricia L. Davidson.

For veteran litigator James C. Donnelly Jr. also a member of the plaintiff's team, "[the trial included] some of the most emotionally intense testimony I've ever seen in a courtroom."

In the end, a superior court jury in Fall River, Mass., awarded the plaintiff $550,000, finding that the defendant committed fraud by marrying her when he was already married. That verdict included $300,000 for the battery that occurred when she consummated the marriage and lost her virginity.

The lawyer for the defendant, John E. Zajac, did not respond to calls for comment before press time.

'That's my husband'

In 2000, Harshini Weerasinghe was a 30-something Christian pediatrician living and working in Sri Lanka. When her parents ran an advertisement in a local newspaper looking for a husband for their daughter, Ronald D. Viveiros of Berkley, Mass., answered the ad.

Over several months, the two developed a long-distance relationship via the telephone and e-mail.

"They fell in love," said Davidson.

Viveiros proposed, and they were married on Feb. 21, 2001, in an elaborate Sri Lankan ceremony that was bankrolled by the plaintiff's parents.

After the wedding, Viveiros and Weerasinghe, a virgin at the time, consummated the marriage.

Over the next two-and-a-half years, Weerasinghe and Viveiros lived apart, he in Massachusetts and she in Sri Lanka and later on the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. They saw each other in person only once, during a five-day honeymoon in Sri Lanka.

During their marriage, Weerasinghe gave Viveiros more than $136,000, and her parents presented him with a $25,000 investment.

In 2003, Weerasinghe became suspicious of her husband, and, with the help of a Massachusetts attorney, conducted a background check on him. In October, she and her lawyer arrived unannounced at Viveiros' house, only to discover that he had another wife – Dina M. Viveiros-Jorge.

"It was one of those, 'That's my husband; [no,] that's my husband' confrontations," said Davidson.

He said that after the two women met, the Viveiros contacted the plaintiff in her hotel room and admitted that he had lied about being married.

Weerasinghe broke off contact with Viveiros, returned to Turks and Caicos, and her family sued Viveiros in Sri Lanka for fraud. That case is still pending.

In April 2005, Weerasinghe married another man, Dr. Michael A. Turner and went to live with him in North Carolina.

The following December, Viveiros renewed contact with Weerasinghe, repeatedly calling her at her North Carolina home. He also hired attorneys to sue her for practicing bigamy and initiated a criminal bigamy and fraud complaint against her with North Carolina police, but both efforts ultimately failed.

In February 2006, Weerasinghe filed a complaint against Viveiros in Superior Court in Massachusetts that alleged that Viveiros, not Weerasinghe, was the bigamist and that he committed fraud by marrying Weerasinghe when he already had a wife.

Phony e-mails?

From the beginning, Davidson argued that her client's case was not a criminal bigamy case but rather a civil fraud case. Because Viveiros was already married and "bigamous" marriages are void from the start in both Massachusetts and Sri Lanka, she said, his marriage to Weerasinghe was invalid and therefore fraudulent.

"They were never married, so this is not a probate action," she said. "This is a good, old-fashioned tort case based on fraud, conversion, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, and battery, because consent to sex on the wedding night and afterward was based on the fraudulent assumption that she was married to [Viveiros]."

According to Davidson, the defense argued right up to trial that the defendant's marriage to the plaintiff was legal. But a week before trial, the judge ruled that under Massachusetts law, the marriage was void, effectively killing that defense.

So during trial, the defense adjusted its strategy to accusing Weerasinghe of fraud, according to Davidson.

"The defense theory seemed to be, 'OK, Viveiros perpetuated fraud, but after [Weerasinghe] found out, she tried to perpetuate fraud on him,'" she said. "[The defense attorney] tried to say that after [Weerasinghe] found out about the lie, she was actually lying to him and leading him to believe she wanted to be with him – and that she was devising ways to make money from him."

As evidence, the defense submitted e-mails allegedly from Weerasinghe, in which she expressed a desire to be with Viveiros. But on the witness stand, Weerasinghe denied writing the e-mails, claiming that Viveiros composed the messages himself, using her password to access her account.

"Because the testimony was all so vague, and [Weerasinghe] denied it, and Viveiros had zero credibility, the defense never got any traction," Davidson said.

Still, from an evidentiary standpoint, convincing the jury that the e-mails were fraudulent was difficult, the plaintiff's lawyer acknowledged.

"You look at an e-mail from your e-mail address, and everybody assumes that it's legitimate," she said.

'Nothing more than a civil union'

Other Massachusetts defense lawyers said they would have avoided trying the case at all costs.

"The only defense here would be to say, 'This really wasn't a marriage,'" said Fall River trial attorney Brian R. Cunha. "If I were defending him, I would say, 'This was nothing more than a civil union.' Otherwise, there's no defense because it's straight deceit and you're a bigamist."

Roger D. Matthews, a litigator at Denner Pellegrino in Boston, said that he would have drawn the jury's attention to the unusually long period Weerasinghe and Viveiros lived as man and wife without ever seeing each other.

"Living apart for two-and-a-half-years – that's somewhat of an unusual fact," he said. "Lots of couples live apart, but two-and-a-half years is kind of a long haul. How much weight do you put on that?"

But perhaps the biggest challenge was the sympathetic plaintiff, whose tearful story apparently struck a chord with the jury.

"There was a lot of crying in this trial, and I think the jury was very affected by it," Davidson said. "And there was one very powerful moment during [the defendant's] cross-examination: I asked Viveiros, as sort of an off-the-cuff remark, 'Are you married now?' And he said, 'Yes, I am. … I'm married to your client.' The judge got very angry, because the judge had already ruled, and had instructed the jury several times, that the marriage was void from the beginning. Because of how he blurted it out, and of how the judge responded, it was like one of those things that happens on TV but never happens in the boring reality of jury trials."

Questions or comments can be directed to the writer at: julia.reischel@lawyersweekly.com