The settlement, revealed through a GTY regulatory filing and an OpenGov press release, involved GTY and its insurers paying OpenGov a total of $5.8 million. In return, OpenGov agreed to a “full and complete release of all claims that were or could have been asserted.”
The move ends a pair of lawsuits between the two in New York and California courts, both centered on the same accusations. It all began with GTY’s “reverse IPO,” wherein it entered the stock market as a shell company in order to raise money that it planned on using to acquire other companies.
Those companies ended up being a slew of gov tech firms. GTY leaders approached OpenGov about the deal and even entered into a confidentiality agreement with the company, but eventually broke off the arrangement and proceeded without OpenGov.
OpenGov asserted in its lawsuit that GTY used that confidentiality agreement to dig up information that GTY then used to complete its merger with the other companies it eventually acquired.
Because of the settlement, no courts will weigh in on those assertions, or GTY’s defense — that it had legitimate reasons for not including OpenGov in the merger, that OpenGov didn’t provide information to GTY in a timely manner, and that GTY didn’t use OpenGov’s confidential information.
But GTY will be giving a cash infusion to OpenGov. That money, according to the company’s press release, will go to OpenGov’s financial reserves as well as research and development.
