The long and winding legal drama over the demise of Curt Schilling’s video game company has apparently come to a close, as the state of Rhode Island reached a settlement with the final party involved in the debacle.
The latest
Wells Fargo Securities and Barclays Capital Inc. agreed to pay $25 million in a partial settlement earlier this month, but the suit was still pending against Schilling and other 38 Studios executives as well as Rhode Island financial advisor First Southwest.
Monday’s settlement, if approved by a judge, will see Schilling and the others pay $2.5 million to settle the claims against them, bringing the total the state has recovered to close to $45 million and leaving First Southwest as the only remaining defendant.
And via the AP comes news that that final defendant has indeed settled as well:
Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein approved the settlement after hearing from lawyers for both sides: the state’s economic development agency and Dallas-based Hilltop Securities Inc. Hilltop was formerly the First Southwest Co., the state’s financial adviser on the deal, and agreed to pay $16 million to get out of the case.
The total settlements in the case end up at about $61 million. A number of other parties previously settled, including Schilling and other 38 Studios executives, lawyers and companies that worked on the deal, and officials at the economic development agency.
No criminal charges were filed during the course of the proceedings, which some residents have criticized. In a respectable effort towards transparency, the current Rhode Island governor is aiming to release all the documents in the case to the public:
Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo announced Friday she’ll file a petition in court to seek the release of documents from the state grand jury investigation into the deal that never resulted in any criminal charges.
“Now that the civil case and criminal case is closed, we should make all the documents available to the public and give the people of our state closure,” Raimondo said in a statement.
Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, also a Democrat, has voiced concerns about releasing investigative records from the case. Raimondo says Rhode Island residents have a right to know what happened.
It’s hard to imagine that there’s going to be anything in those documents that makes Curt Schilling look good, though at the same time, it’s also hard to imagine his reputation falling any farther from where it currently lies.
Though the final paragraph in that AP story is choice:
Schilling has said his company failed because it didn’t raise enough money, not because he did anything malicious or illegal. He also has faulted Rhode Island politicians for giving him a loan guarantee in the first place.
It’s hard to imagine that a variant of Groucho’s “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member!” defense would have held up in court.
[AP]
