The Salt Lake law firm of Parsons Behle & Latimer has agreed to pay $6,965,000 to settle a lawsuit over its role in the Bonneville Pacific Corp. scandal.
The settlement was announced late Friday in a briefly worded news release issued by Cohne, Rappaport & Segal, a Salt Lake firm acting as trustee for Bonneville Pacific, which is in bankruptcy and whose former executives are accused by investors of bilking them of millions of dollars through a series of shams.Friday's settlement stems from a 1993 civil suit naming Parsons Behle & Latimer one of numerous defendants and accusing the firm of accepting $2.5 million from Bonneville administrators in exchange for legal advice.
The Parsons firm began working for Bonneville Pacific in 1983 before the company went public. The 1993 suit charged that partners in the firm helped design transactions that let Bonneville executives drain the alternative-energy company of its assets.
On June 1, long-awaited federal grand-jury indictments over the scandal named four defendants in allegations that included conspiracy, fraud and tax crimes. Among them were David P. Hirschi, a Centerville attorney and former partner in the Parsons firm who became the company's vice president and secretary.