ST. PAUL — An appeals court indicated Tuesday that it might agree to order a new trial in Jesse Ventura’s defamation lawsuit over the book “American Sniper” because jurors were told the publisher’s insurer would be “on the hook” for the $1.8 million they awarded him.

An attorney for author Chris Kyle’s estate said in oral arguments to a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the comments were so prejudicial that the judges should order a new trial at the least. Lawyer Lee Levine also asked the panel to throw out the entire judgment on First Amendment and other legal grounds.

Jurors awarded the former Minnesota governor $500,000 for defamation and $1.3 million for unjust enrichment last year in a trial over a passage in Kyle’s book that Ventura claimed was a complete fabrication. Kyle, the deadliest sniper in U.S. military history, described punching out a man, later identified as Ventura, whom he said made offensive remarks about Navy SEALs and said the SEALs “deserve to lose a few” in Iraq. The book was also made into a hit movie.

Ventura, a former Underwater Demolition Teams/SEAL member, testified that he never made the comments and the altercation never happened. He said the book ruined his reputation in the SEAL community.

During closing arguments, Ventura’s attorney, David Bradley Olsen, told jurors the “insurer is on the hook if you find that Jesse Ventura was defamed.” That followed questions he put to two HarperCollins employees about whether Kyle was covered by the publisher’s policy