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September 13, 2019

Jury awards $500K in verdict against Knights of Columbus

Photo | Chris Hoffman The Knights of Columbus headquarters at 1 Columbus Plaza, New Haven.
By Michelle Tuccitto Sullo

A federal jury in Colorado awarded a vendor $500,000 in its litigation against the Knights of Columbus, after concluding the New Haven-based Catholic organization breached its contract with the company.

Jurors reached the verdict on Thursday in a trial that lasted 12 days. 

The plaintiff, a Colorado company called List Interactive, doing business as UKnight, had sought roughly $100 million in the litigation. The jury concluded that the plaintiff failed to prove its other claims, which included allegations of intentional interference with prospective business relations and misappropriation of trade secrets.

While the Knights of Columbus is known primarily for its charitable efforts, the organization also sells life-insurance products. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2017 in U.S. District Court in Colorado. 

The plaintiff claimed the Knights “destroyed” its business and cost it “millions of dollars” by reneging on a deal. UKnight, which had designed and implemented websites for some local Knights of Columbus councils in Texas, had reached out to the Knights in 2011 in hopes of getting the entire organization to use its interactive system in a single online platform, court documents show. UKnight officials met with K of C leadership in 2011 in New Haven and left that meeting believing a formal agreement had been reached. The litigation claimed the Knights of Columbus strung UKnight along for years, all the while offering reassurances that an agreement between the parties was in place.

The Knights of Columbus and its legal team, meanwhile, denied the existence of any contract, written or verbal, with UKnight.

The litigation claimed the Knights were motivated to back out of the contract because the plaintiff’s system would have exposed that the Knights’ membership was “shrinking and aging,” potentially placing the organization’s insurance rating in jeopardy. 

The Knights also denied this allegation, and point to their A.M. Best credit rating, which ranked them at A+ (Superior) as of January, with its outlook “stable.”

Attorney Christopher Mills of the law firm Jones & Keller of Denver, who represented UKnight, could not be reached for comment following the verdict. 

Shari Smith, corporate communications manager with the Knights of Columbus, issued a statement Thursday afternoon.

“We are pleased to share that a jury issued a verdict in the case of List Interactive (UKnight) vs. Knights of Columbus and found that the bulk of the plaintiffs' claims had no merit,” the statement said. “Despite seeking more than $100 million, the plaintiffs were awarded $500,000 by the jury.”

“As testimony and evidence during the trial revealed, the plaintiffs sought in this contract case to concoct a narrative about the manner and intent behind the way the Knights track its membership numbers,” the statement said. “We defended ourselves vigorously against these false claims because we believe we owe it to the men who volunteer their time as members of this organization and to the many people who give generously to our charities to remove any doubt about the honesty, character and integrity of our organization. We commend the jury for seeing this for what it was — a garden variety contract case.”

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