THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 20, 1996 TAG: 9605200033
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 155 lines
First the house blew up, killing a woman. Then the woman's family sued. They blamed the Eastern Shore explosion on faulty installation of a gas heater and gas line.
The lawsuit in Norfolk's federal court made headlines. ``Gas firms sued for fatal explosion,'' The Virginian-Pilot reported.
And then the case disappeared.
Like thousands of lawsuits before it, the case of John W. Mason vs. SharpGas Inc. never made it to trial. It was recently settled out of court - confidentially. A judge approved the terms, then sealed them.
For the public and customers of the gas companies, that means the result is unknown. It means that the larger issue - did a woman die because of a company's negligence? - will never be answered.
But while the facts of this case are unusual - thankfully, house explosions are rare - what happened in court was not.
Every year thousands of lawsuits are filed in local courts. Most attract no attention. Some result in small newspaper stories. A few get front-page treatment.
And yet, after a suit is filed, sometimes the public never hears about it again.
It is not that newspapers and TV stations forget about them. Often there is just nothing else to report. A case is settled. But how and why?That remains a mystery.
``Most civil cases settle. That's the norm,'' said Jon C. Paulson, an Eastern Shore lawyer who handled the house explosion case. ``There are just certain cases in which a party may request, as a condition of the settlement, that the terms be confidential.''
In fact, it is rare that a settlement is publicly disclosed.
When is the public entitled to know? And when are the feuding parties entitled to privacy?
Lawyers agree on one point: Often both sides want to keep things quiet. Even in very famous, very public cases.
Consider the case of the captured crocs.
Robert Parks was a reptile collector. He had about 125 critters - alligators, crocodiles, snakes of every variety. One day in 1993, police raided his Norfolk home and took them all away.
Parks sued. He claimed the raid was illegal. He claimed the city wrecked his house, confiscated his property, banished him from his own home for eight days. He wanted $125,000 in damages.
It was the most public case possible. Not only were the facts bizarre, but the lawsuit raised questions of official misconduct.
Last month, the case disappeared from Norfolk's federal court. It was settled confidentially. Whatever the city paid in taxpayer money, the public will never know. Both sides are mum.
Norfolk City Attorney Philip Trapani said the city isn't trying to hide anything.
``The embarrassment of the government is never a concern'' in confidential settlements, Trapani said. ``This (settlement) is mostly driven by a legitimate concern that Mr. Parks has had enough interruption with his affairs.'' In any case, Trapani added, ``We're not talking big money here.''
No law prevents governments from making private settlements, other than political embarrassment.
It happened in a big way in 1988 when Virginia Beach quietly paid a Yorktown man $950,000 for a car wreck caused by then-Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Sciortino.
The payout remained secret until Councilwoman Reba McClanan, tweaked by conscience, blew the whistle. ``This is public money,'' she said. ``It's not a private individual dealing with his own money.''
A few days later, the Virginia Beach City Council agreed that any future settlements over $100,000 would require public approval.
In Norfolk, Trapani said he could recall only a few confidential settlements by the city in his 30 years, covering thousands of cases. ``They are, and should be, exceedingly rare,'' Trapani said.
Henry Howell III, the attorney for reptile collector Parks, said he made the secret settlement, contrary to his own personal convictions, because his client's interests came first.
``I'm opposed in principle to having terms of settlements confidential. What happens in courts is the public's business,'' Howell said. ``Speaking as a member of the public, I would like to know the terms by which a case is settled. I find it of interest. I think most people find it of interest.''
But, Howell added, ``As an attorney, I can't justify not keeping a settlement confidential. My client gains nothing'' from publicity.
So who benefits from private settlements of public cases?
Usually the defendant. Sometimes the plaintiff. Often both.
Consider the bloody burger case.
In 1994, a Virginia Beach firefighter was eating lunch when he allegedly found a bloody adhesive bandage in a McDonald's Quarter-Pounder Deluxe. He became sick, then sued the restaurant owner for $100,000.
This was reported in the MetroNews section of The Virginian-Pilot.
Since then, the case vanished. There was nothing more to report. The case was settled in March. Not surprisingly, neither side was talking. The restaurant did not want more bad publicity. The firefighter probably didn't want anyone to know how much money he got - assuming he got any.
In fact, neither side is allowed to talk, under the confidentiality agreement.
``I don't even want to say, `No comment.' I don't even want to say anything,'' said the firefighter's attorney, Reeves Mahoney.
The law is quiet on silent settlements. In Virginia, only two kinds of cases must be settled publicly by a judge: wrongful death and infant injuries. Even then, details can be scarce.
Sometimes - as in the house explosion case - a settlement is filed in court, approved by a judge, then sealed. No one can see it. The parties can't talk about it. Anyone who does can be fined or jailed.
More often, lawyers just withdraw their lawsuits or judges dismiss them. The parties involved just don't talk about them, and they don't have to.
That's what happened after the worst shipping accident in Hampton Roads history.
In 1990, two huge container ships, the Neptune Jade and the Columbus America, collided in heavy fog on Chesapeake Bay. The wreck spilled 30,000 gallons of oil into the Bay and Elizabeth River, fouling scores of boats and forcing a massive cleanup. The Coast Guard spent two years investigating the crash.
Last year, both shipping companies sued each other in Norfolk's federal court. Each accused the other of causing the accident. Each wanted to seize the other's ship and sell it for damages.
The trial was supposed to happen last month. Instead, the companies worked out a private settlement. A judge dismissed the lawsuits.
Who got what? No one will say.
``When cases are settled like that, it's something private between the settling parties,'' said lawyer Arthur Jett, who represented the Neptune Jade. ``A lot of times these foreign companies are not interested in seeing it in the papers.''
Even lawyers who lash out against the idea of confidential settlements do it.
In 1992, a Navy helicopter crashed into the Lynnhaven River in Virginia Beach, killing seven reservists. The families sued the helicopter's manufacturer, then settled out of court last year.
The families could not reveal the terms, but one widow described it as ``a very large settlement. . . We won in a big way.''
The families' attorney, Thomas Harlan, believes confidential settlements should be banned, that the public is not served by them, especially in cases of faulty products. ``The bargaining chip should be taken away from the (defense) lawyers so they can't do this,'' Harlan said last week.
Yet he, too, let the copter case be settled confidentially. His clients were simply tired of fighting, he said. ``I can't make the decision for my clients,'' Harlan said.
That's not unusual, said Brad Stillman, a Norfolk lawyer who is president-elect of the Virginia Association of Defense Attorneys.
``In my view, most plaintiffs are not interested in seeing their settlements reported in the press,'' Stillman said.
``They're interested in compensation and moving on with their lives. . . . Most lawyers will advance their clients' interests and not seek notoriety if their client doesn't want it.''
Howell agreed.
``It's easy to file a lawsuit. But then going through litigation for a year is very sobering. It's an ordeal for clients going through it,'' Howell said.
``Most people want it over. Most people want to resolve it and compromise without publicity. People want their privacy.''
KEYWORDS: LAWSUIT SETTLEMENT by CNB