This week in Florida, a would-be bride was awarded $150,000 when she sued her former fiancé for calling off the couple’s wedding plans. 

 After a long-distance romance, RoseMary Shell left a high-paying job making $81,000 in Pensacola, Fl., and moved to Gainesville, Ga., to be with her fiancé Wayne Gibbs.  Gibbs and Shell had both lived in Gainesville originally; the couple met in 2001, fell in love, and made plans to marry when Shell’s youngest son left for college.  But when that failed to happen, Shell packed her things in 2005, moved to Pensacola, found a good job and began dating someone new.  Fearing he’d made a mistake, Gibbs began to woo Shell long-distance, and in October 2006, proposed to her with a 2 ct. diamond ring.  He asked Shell to leave Pensacola and return to Gainesville to be with him so the two could marry.  An elated Shell agreed and the couple set a December 2 wedding date. 

 But here’s the whammy.  Just 1 month after Shell returned to Gainesville to be with Gibbs, she found a note from Gibbs in the bathroom, expressing his reservations about the relationship.  The couple postponed the wedding date. They continued living together but officially split up a few months later in March 2007.  Shell, who was now working at a local university and earning almost $50,000 less than she had at her job in Pensacola, began contemplating what she’d given up based on the broken promises of her fiancé.  She decided to sue.

 In court room testimony last week, Gibbs claimed that he’d taken Shell on lavish vacations, gave her $30,000 to pay toward her debt, and made house payments for her.  He testified that learning of Shell’s additional debt gave him reservations about marrying her, but Shell testified that she’d made Gibbs aware of all of her debt before the couple became engaged.

Siding with the jilted bride, a jury awarded Shell $150,000 on Wednesday. Shell met with Meredith Vieira Friday on the TODAY show to discuss the verdict.  “Primarily because he made a promise to me and I relied on that promise and gave up a lot of things because of that promise… I suffered significantly for it,” she explained. “I just felt like people shouldn’t be allowed to do people that way.”

Was the jury right in punishing Shell’s former fiancé?  Should a person ever be monetarily penalized for calling off a wedding?  Tell us what you think!

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