- Reid Frazier reports for State Impact Pennsylvania
Range Resources and other defendants agreed to pay $3 million to settle a lawsuit last year with three Washington County families who alleged the natural gas drilling company contaminated their properties and made them sick, according to a court document obtained by The Allegheny Front and StateImpact Pennsylvania.
In a separate release, Range revealed that the company’s insurance carrier paid $1.88 million to the plaintiffs to settle the case. “We have voluntarily released the settlement agreement that resolved prior litigation with eight landowners in Washington County. We believe this additional transparency resolves any outstanding questions on this topic,” Range spokesman Mark Windle said in an emailed statement.
The settlement, agreed to in January 2018, remains sealed, though much of its contents are now public. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is suing to have the agreement made public.
Terms of the settlement were spelled out in a court order dated Aug. 31, 2018 and signed by Washington County Court of Common Pleas Judge Katherine B. Emery. The order was issued under seal but was publicly available over the course of at least two days, May 28 and May 29, on the Washington County Prothonotary’s Public Case File Database.
Washington County Prothonotary Joy Ranko said on May 30 that the order had not been uploaded into a public-facing database where the county stores its court records. She later told the Washington Observer-Reporter that the document was public because of a computer error.
On May 30, after learning that The Allegheny Front and StateImpact had obtained the record, Emery issued an injunction against the news organizations, barring them from reporting on its contents, and setting a hearing date for Tuesday.
At the hearing Tuesday in Washington County common pleas court, Range told Emery it would publicly release settlement terms that apply to Range, and did not ask Emery to continue her order for the injunction. They said the company was seeking “peace” in the matter.
