Kentucky Landmark Legal Settlements
Judge OK's settlement in suit against NiSource, others
In 2010, a federal judge approved a $28.75 million settlement between more than 8,000 eastern Kentucky landowners and a group of natural gas companies. The class-action settlement ended more than two years of litigation over royalties from natural gas drilling in Kentucky's Martin and Pike counties. The landowners sued Chesapeake Appalachia LLC, NiSource Inc., and Columbia Energy Group over allegations of shortchanging royalty payments and providing inaccurate statements about royalty payments to the landowners.
Gillispie, University of Kentucky settle for $2.9M
In 2009, former men's basketball coach Billy Gillispie and the University of Kentucky settled their cases over his firing for nearly $3 million. Gillispie, who was the coach of the most popular sports program in Kentucky for two years, sued the university for fraud and breach of contract after he was fired. The university counter-sued. After Gillispie's departure, Kentucky hired ex-Memphis coach John Calipari, who led the Wildcats to the NCAA championship game.
Fraud Inquiry in Kentucky’s Fen-Phen case
In 2001, American Home Products settled with several hundred Kentucky plaintiffs for some $200 million over claims of heart damage caused by the diet drug combination Fen-Phen. The settlement was meant to compensate the plaintiffs for claims of heart damage caused by the drug combination, which had been withdrawn from the market at the request of the FDA. Instead, the lawyers defrauded their clients, a state judge later ruled in a civil case, when they settled Fen-Phen lawsuits on behalf of 440 of them for $200 million, but kept the bulk of the money for themselves. Legal experts called the fraud one of the biggest and most brazen in legal history.
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