A legal settlement Tuesday brought Duke another step closer to tying up the last pieces of the lacrosse case.
Duke and a subsidiary of the insurance company American International Group Inc. have settled a 2008 lawsuit Duke brought to recover expenses related to claims from the 2006 incident. AIG and Duke mutually agreed to dismiss the suit, Bloomberg News reported.
The terms of the settlement between Duke and National Union Fire Insurance Co., the AIG subsidiary, have not been disclosed. In 2008, a lawyer for AIG said the company offered Duke $5 million to end the case, Bloomberg News reported.
In an interview, Michael Schoenfeld, Duke’s vice president for public affairs and government relations, declined to comment. A spokesman for AIG declined to comment to Bloomberg News.
Duke filed the suit in November 2008 after the AIG subsidiary that was insuring Duke refused to cover the costs of confidential settlements with the three wrongly indicted lacrosse players and with former men’s lacrosse coach Mike Pressler.
Duke said the company had breached its contract by not covering Duke’s expenses.
“National Union’s actions in adjusting and denying the underlying claims were willful, wanton, malicious, without justification or excuse and taken in bad faith to further National Union’s own improper objectives and with the conscious intent to injure Duke,” the suit reads.
In a 2009 filing, National Union said it refused to pay for the settlements because they were reached without the company’s knowledge, which constituted a violation of the insurance company’s contract with the University.
Duke settled with the athletes—Collin Finnerty, Reade Seligmann and Dave Evans, all Trinity ’06—in June 2007. The University also reached a settlement with Pressler, who was pushed to resign during the lacrosse case, in spring 2007. He later sued Duke for slander and a confidential settlement was reached in that case as well.
The lawsuits all stem from the aftermath of a March 2006 party held by members of the men’s lacrosse team. Crystal Mangum, an exotic dancer hired to perform at the party, accused three lacrosse players of raping her at the event. The University canceled the team’s season after the allegations were made.
All charges against the players were ultimately dismissed, and the prosecutor on the case was disbarred and jailed for a day.
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