WILLIAMSPORT – A nine-year-old whistleblower’s suit against the officers and directors of a non-profit corporation of which the late U.S. Rep. Allen E. Ertel was principal was settled on the eve of trial.
Terms of the settlement reached Friday in suit brought by Maria Casey, former in-house counsel for Firetree Ltd. in Williamsport, were not disclosed.
“We are pleased that the long ordeal has ended in a resolution without the necessity of a trial,” her attorney James J. Rodgers said Sunday.
A jury already had been picked for the trial scheduled to begin Monday in Lycoming County court with a visiting senior judge presiding.
Casey filed the suit in 2013 claiming she was fired for providing financial records to the state attorney general’s office that resulted in an investigation into Firetree that Ertel help establish in 1991.
Most of the documents in the case have been under seal despite efforts by Casey, who is clerk of courts in Schuylkill County, to get them unsealed.
The state Superior Court affirmed the decision of Senior Potter County Judge John Leete to keep most of the court file sealed.
Rodgers said two years ago his client was distressed that the documents were sealed because that hid evidence of alleged misconduct of Firetree’s managers from public scrutiny. There was no compelling reason for the sealing, which Rodgers said “frustrates the principle of open courts and the rights of the press to access matters of public concern under the First Amendment.”
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