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 The Austin-based university sued O'Neal over the ownership of
the 1980 Warhol in 2011, after the "Charlie's Angels" star
bequeathed her art collection to her alma mater before her death
in 2009.
That collection now in university hands includes a similar
portrait of Fawcett — with her signature cascading tresses — painted by Warhol at the same time. The university said in court
that Fawcett had wanted the school to have both portraits.
The jury ruled 9-3 in O'Neal's favor at the Los Angeles Superior
Court, a spokeswoman said, after two days of deliberation.
The university said it was disappointed that the jury "saw the
evidence in a different way."
"We sought the second Warhol portrait of Farrah Fawcett only
because we wanted to honor her legacy," the school said in a
statement. "In her living trust she left 'all of her artwork and
art objects' to the University of Texas, and we thought it
important to try to enforce her intent."
The contested portrait hangs in O'Neal's bedroom in his Malibu
house and was discovered by the university after it showed up in
an episode of a reality show starring O'Neal.
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 A Hollywood golden couple, O'Neal and Fawcett never
married, but they had an off-and-on relationship that spanned three
decades and produced a son. They rekindled their relationship
shortly before her death from cancer at the age 62.
In testimony in court, the 72-year-old O'Neal maintained that Warhol
was a friend and had given him the portrait and that Fawcett and her
friends acknowledged his ownership.
Fawcett's "Charlie's Angels" co-star Jaclyn Smith also testified in
favor of O'Neal, saying that she knew that was what Fawcett would
have wanted.
O'Neal's lawyer said in court that the portrait by Warhol, a pioneer
of pop art who died in 1987 at the age of 58, was worth about
$800,000 to $1 million. The appraiser hired by the university and
who testified in the case put its value at an estimated $12 million.
(Reporting Eric Kelsey; writing by Mary
Milliken; editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker)
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