Settlement Agreements

The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering changing its settlement agreement policy to release more details about investigations, The Washington Post reported.

Currently, the SEC allows companies and individuals to negotiate settlements without a public trial or admission of wrongdoing and the only public records generated are settlement agreements, which are typically only one or two pages in length.

The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled in favor of a local newspaper last week when it ordered a trial court to unseal a settlement agreement between a Kentucky school board and a teacher who sued after she was not hired.

The Central Kentucky News-Journal asked for the agreement under the state's public-records law, but both a trial court and an appellate court refused to unseal the documents, citing privacy exemptions.

A Wisconsin city must release the complete personnel file of a local police officer convicted of drunk driving in a settlement reached with the Herald Times Reporter.

The Asbury Park Press reports it has won an appeal for details of a 2007 sexual harrassment settlement between Monmouth County and a local Department of Public Works and Engineering official.

Parts of more than 2,000 court cases in Oklahoma were sealed between 2003 and 2007, including divorce documents, wrongful death settlements and name changes, according to a sweeping account of court secrecy by the Tulsa World.

The Associated Press reports that Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick appealed to the Michigan Supreme Court after the state Court of Appeals decided on Wednesday to uphold a judge's Feb. 5 ruling requiring the city to release all remaining secret documents that were part of the mayor's case.

Hewlett-Packard Co. has agreed to a financial settlement with The New York Times and reporters from BusinessWeek magazine that stems from a 2006 scandal in which the company used a surveillance scheme to obtain the phone records of journalists.

The Michigan Court of Appeals decided on Wednesday to uphold a judge's Feb. 5 ruling requiring the City of Detroit to release all remaining secret documents that were part of the Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick case.

Detroit citizens will now get to view more of the details of their mayor's recent affair and the secret settlement deal reached with two of his former bodyguards that gave the men $8.4 million of city funds to walk away and keep quiet about it.

The Miami Herald and jockey Jose Santos have settled a libel suit that Santos filed against the newspaper in 2005.

Santos claimed the Herald had falsely accused him of carrying an illegal and unauthorized object, later determined to be his whip, with him when he was riding in the Kentucky Derby.

The settlement terms are confidential, according to attorneys.

The Associated Press reports that a Texas judge dismissed a libel suit against the San Antonio Express-News stemming from several stories and an editorial alleging misconduct on behalf of a Louisiana company that previously ran Bexar County’s jail commissaries. As part of an agreement with Premier Management Enterprises, the paper acknowledged there were three minor factual errors in the stories that ran in December 2005.