Fourteen months after Green Mountain Power had a Vermont reporter arrested for trespassing, the electric utility company has agreed to foot the reporter’s legal bills.
Barton Chronicle editor Chris Braithwaite said Tuesday afternoon he planned to drop a lawsuit against the company after it promised to compensate him $22,500 for legal fees he racked up defending himself against a previously dismissed trespassing charge.
The dispute stems from Braithwaite’s December 2011 arrest for failing to leave GMP-owned property on Lowell Mountain as he covered a protest against the company’s Kingdom Community Wind project.
In a written statement, Braithwaite called the settlement “a fair resolution of this matter.”
GMP spokeswoman Dotty Schnure, meanwhile, said the company’s decision to settle the suit in no way indicates it did anything wrong.
“We’re confident we would have prevailed based upon all the facts and the law, but we didn’t see how it benefits our customers to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to litigate the case,” Schnure said.
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