A jury ordered Jennifer Jo Cobb to pay Tracey Hughes $850,000 on Thursday after Hughes sued over an affair involving her husband, Clayton Hughes. The verdict in North Carolina ended the trial with damages split between two claims.
Tracey Hughes received $50,000 for alienation of affection and $800,000 for criminal conversation. Her filing said Cobb “willfully, intentionally, and deliberately seduced, enticed, and alienated the affections” of Clayton Hughes, and that she “suffered the loss of support, injury to [her] feelings and reputation, and had her marital relationship destroyed.”
Tracey Hughes lawsuit
Hughes said in the 2024 lawsuit that her marriage had been “happily married” before it split in 2021. The complaint said Cobb called and texted Clayton Hughes while traveling for races and arranged “regular trysts” with him.
North Carolina allows alienation of affection and criminal conversation claims in some cases, and this case shows how those claims can turn into a large money judgment. The lawsuit did not name Clayton Hughes as a defendant.
Jennifer Jo Cobb defense
Cobb denied the allegations in court papers and tried, unsuccessfully, to get the suit tossed. The jury still sided with Hughes on both claims, leaving Cobb with the option to appeal the verdict.
For Hughes, the judgment recognizes the breakup she tied to the affair and gives her a damages award that is larger than the combined amount she first sought on the two claims. For Cobb, the case is not necessarily over; an appeal would put the verdict back in play and ask a higher court to review how the jury reached it.
North Carolina verdict
The dispute also drew on Cobb’s long racing career, which stretched from 2001 through 2024 in NASCAR’s O'Reilly Auto Parts Series and Truck Series. That background placed a well-known NASCAR driver at the center of a marriage case that turned on competing accounts of what happened between the two couples.
What evidence persuaded the jury to divide the award between alienation of affection and criminal conversation remains the unresolved point for readers following the case, but the money judgment now stands unless Cobb pursues an appeal.
