Two companies facing multiple lawsuits over a summer tourist boat accident in Missouri that killed 17 people have invoked an 1851 law that allows vessel owners to try to avoid or limit legal damages as they also seek settlement negotiations with victims’ family members. But Tia Coleman, an Indianapolis woman who survived the accident, and lawyers for others whose family members died denounced the filing as callous and insulting.
Lake County has agreed to pay $185,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against the northwestern Indiana county’s recorder. Taxpayers will finance the payment to Estela Montalvo, the former part-time recorder’s office employee who sued recorder Michael B. Brown and the county in federal court last year, alleging sexual harassment.
Attorney General Curtis Hill said Indiana will receive nearly $1.5 million of the $148 million Uber has agreed to pay to states after the ride-hailing company failed for a year to notify drivers that hackers had stolen their personal information.
A settlement has been reached in lawsuits filed after a rollover crash on a southwestern Indiana freeway killed two Haitian immigrants and injured 20 others. The suits were filed after a van carrying Christela Georges, 60-year-old Gena Moise and other workers crashed in 2015 on Interstate 69 near Evansville.
A proposed workplace-benefits settlement of more than $13.3 million for Federal Express drivers who were wrongly classified as contractors rather than employees has been approved by an Indiana federal judge overseeing a nationwide docket of employment suits against the delivery service.
Ball State University has agreed to pay more than $12,000 and to revise its student activity fund allocation guidelines as part of a settlement with a pro-life student organization that sued the school earlier this summer for alleged free speech and equal protection violations.
A federal judge late last week awarded plaintiffs’ lawyers $31.05 million in legal feels in the Anthem Inc. data breach case, ending a months-long dispute over how much they deserved for striking the $115 million settlement last year. The fees were less than the $38 million the attorneys originally had requested.
Indiana’s second-largest city has settled a federal lawsuit that challenged a portion of its ordinance regulating amplified noises. Court documents filed Tuesday show the city of Fort Wayne has agreed to an injunction permanently barring it from enforcing a provision that “prohibits amplified sound, including speech, that can be heard more than 50 feet from the source.”
Louisiana State Police and a black Indiana man who was handcuffed and detained in New Orleans' French Quarter when he was a teenager in 2015 have settled a federal lawsuit. Terms of the settlement with the son of a Ball State University professor were not immediately disclosed.
Indiana drivers who were overcharged by the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles could soon find it easier to claim the last $3.3 million of a much larger class-action settlement. A bureaucratic snafu had prevented people from receiving their payments from the state attorney general’s unclaimed property division, so Marion County Judge Heather Welch directed the BMV to refund the money itself through credits or refund checks.
Kimberly Hively, the adjunct math professor whose employment discrimination complaint changed Title VII law in the 7th Circuit, has settled with her former employer, Ivy Tech Community College. But the issue of whether the Civil Rights Act provision extends to sexual orientation continues to roil in other judicial districts and may yet be examined by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Indiana will receive $275,000 as its part of a $1.1 million civil penalty against Anchor Glass Container Corp. for emitting harmful pollutants in violation of the Clean Air Act. The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposed settlement agreement Monday with Anchor Glass to improve compliance at its glass manufacturing facilities in six states, including a manufacturing plant in Lawrenceburg, Indiana.
The Indiana Court of Appeals found a trial court exceeded its authority and made errors of law when it ordered only $1 million into a special needs trust after a settlement of more than $17 million.
The Floyd County Sheriff’s Department has reached a tentative settlement with the father of a woman who died in detention. An order was issued June 22 to file documents and authorize dismissal within 60 days of a civil case filed by Mark Robb against Floyd County Sheriff Frank Loop, the sheriff’s department and eight other employees.
A northwestern Indiana city that hosts an annual festival built around a popular Polish delicacy has reached a settlement in its trademark dispute with a rival festival in Pennsylvania. Since 2014 the Edwardsville Hometown Committee has run the Pennsylvania festival dedicated to the potato-filled dumplings, abundant in a region whose coal mines drew Polish immigrants more than a century ago, while Whiting, Indiana, has hosted Pierogi Fest since 1995.
Former ITT Educational Services Inc. CEO Kevin Modany has agreed to pay $200,000 and accept a five-year ban from serving as an executive of a public company to settle a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit accusing management of hiding the rapidly eroding financial condition of the now-defunct firm from investors. Former ITT Chief Financial Officer Daniel Fitzpatrick agreed to pay $100,000 and accept the same ban under a separate settlement.
The Indiana Court of Appeals cautioned against plaintiffs proclaiming amounts in controversy will not exceed $75,000 unless they can be held to their word when it ruled in a semitruck crash case Tuesday.
The family of a Kokomo couple who died after a repeat drunk driver struck them in Seattle has settled a wrongful death lawsuit against the West Coast city for $13 million.
The city of Indianapolis has agreed to pay $650,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of an unarmed black man fatally shot last year by police officers during a traffic stop.
The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed the Marshall Circuit Court’s decision to deny a woman to repudiate her divorce settlement when she contended the agreement was invalid and motioned to correct error and for relief from judgment.