Bose McKinney & Evans LLP has agreed to pick up part of the opposing counsel's legal tab in an environmental-contamination case in which a federal judge sanctioned both the Indianapolis-based law firm and its client for withholding evidence.
Details of the settlement reached Friday are confidential. But the legal tab split between Bose and its client, Red Spot Paint & Varnish Co. in Evansville, is estimated to runs into the millions.
The firm's agreement to pay the fees stems from a June 5 order in which Indianapolis Judge Larry McKinney found Red Spot failed to come clean about its use of the toxins trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, and that Bose "compounded the problem by, like a chameleon, becoming indistinguishable from its client."
In his order, McKinney stipulated that Bose and Red Spot each pay half of the legal fees of the plaintiff, 1100 West LLC, a neighbor of Red Spot's that had blamed the company for contaminating its site. The judge also declared 1100 West victorious without going through a trial.
"We are very pleased that 1100 West and Bose McKinney & Evans have today resolved their differences in a mutually satisfactory manner." Bose McKinney Managing Partner Kendall C. Crook said in a written statement issued late Friday.
The law firm stepped down from representing Red Spot early this year, and the two principal litigators who handled the case are no longer with the firm. One was fired and the other agreed to quit, according to court records.
In legal filings since, the parties have blamed one another for the miscues.
"Despite being represented by 'new' counsel ... Red Spot continues to obfuscate the truth. ... This demonstrates the root cause of the problem is Red Spot itself and not the lawyers," Bose charged in court papers.
For its part, Red Spot wrote that Bose McKinney, which had collected nearly $3 million in legal fees, had thrown its former client "under the bus" in an effort to distract the court from its own misconduct.
Besides expensive legal fees wracked up in the 6-year-old case, Red Spot is on the hook for millions of dollars in cleanup costs.
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