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A local technology titan and the woman who accuses him of raping her the night before his 2012 wedding reached an out-of-court settlement last week, lawyers for both parties confirmed.
On Jan. 15, WW first reported the civil lawsuit the woman filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
Last Friday, The Oregonian reported a settlement between representatives of Merger Tech CEO Nitin Khanna and Lori Fale, the woman who filed a $2.3 million sexual battery lawsuit against him.
Both Khanna's attorney David Markowitz and Fale's attorney, Scott Upham, confirmed the settlement but declined to offer any details.
"The terms of the settlement are confidential and reflect both parties' desire to put this issue behind them and move forward," Markowitz told WW in a statement.
Upham was similarly tight-lipped."There's nothing else I can say," he said.
Fale brought the suit after police and prosecutors in Yamhill County, where the alleged incident took place, declined to charge Khanna.
WW's policy is not to name victims in sexual assault cases. We are deviating from that policy for this story because Fale voluntarily identified herself in a post on our website.
Fale had DNA evidence—a dress the Yamhill County crime lab showed had Khanna's semen on it.
"We know that sexual contact between (Fale) and (Khanna) occurred," wrote Assistant District Attorney Lisl Miller in a letter explaining the decision not to pursue the case. However, witnesses' accounts to Newberg police contradicted her story.
In the end, after a review from the state attorney general's office, police and prosecutors decided not to bring the case to trial.
Fale took the unusual step of attempting to raise money for the lawsuit using the crowd-funding site YouCaring.com. Fale's page on the site did not name Khanna, but described in graphic detail what she says happened to her.
She ended up raising $5,105 toward the $11,500 she believed she needed before ending her fundraiser following Friday's settlement. Since then, removed her account of the incident from the website.
Khanna is a leading figure in the local tech business community, who has been profiled in WW in the past. He made his name as a founder of Saber Corp., a tech firm that makes voter registration, drivers license, and child support-payment software for state agencies. He sold the company to Electronic Data Systems for a $420 million in 2007, and later founded Merger Tech, an investment bank that deals exclusively in tech buyouts.
WWeek 2015