A giant research firm is paying $750,000 to Massachusetts as part of a multi-million-dollar settlement for knowingly keeping fees from law enforcement agencies, Attorney General Maura Healey’s Office announced.
The $5.8 million multi-state lawsuit against LexisNexis followed a whistleblower complaint from a former employee filed in Massachusetts. The employee will get $1.1 million out of the settlement.
As part of its business research and risk management services, LexisNexis obtains car crash reports from local law enforcement and then sells those reports for use in claims adjustments.
In Massachusetts, 154 law enforcement agencies signed contracts with LexisNexis where the company agreed to pay each agency a fee for each accident report it sold. But the lawsuit revealed LexisNexis paid the agencies a fee for the first time one of their reports was sold, but did not pay them for each subsequent sale.
Under the terms of the settlement, LexisNexis will discontinue resale agreements with law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts. Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Tennessee also joined the lawsuit.
In a statement, LexisNexis said, “We are pleased to have reached a resolution of the investigations by several jurisdictions over the resale of automobile accident reports. We had a disagreement over the meaning of contract language regarding when certain payments were due to law enforcement agencies after crash reports were purchased and then resold. Although we disagreed with the interpretation of the contracts by the jurisdictions, ultimately we decided that rather than litigate, we would settle our disagreement in a way that benefited our law enforcement partners. We want to emphasize that this was not a case about fraud by any LexisNexis entity, and the settlement agreement includes no admission of wrongdoing or liability on the part of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, LexisNexis CopLogic Solutions and LexisNexis Claims Solutions. “
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