The Associated Press
POWNAL, Vt. (AP) - The state has paid $100,000 to settle a lawsuit against a state trooper who shot and killed an unarmed man four years ago, according to court records.
The settlement, which was signed in February but just recently came to the attention of the Bennington Probate Court, ended all the legal claims against Sgt. Robert Vargo and three other officers.
Vargo was on duty in April 2000 when he shot Richard O’Bert, 47, while responding to a domestic violence call at the Burdick Trailer Park.
Police said O’Bert concealed his right hand and then raised it as if he had a gun, leading Vargo to believe his life was in danger.
O’Bert’s family sued in U.S. District Court and Bennington Superior Court. They alleged that Vargo used excessive force. The family claimed that police knew O’Bert was unarmed and presented no danger.
In a settlement, Kenneth O’Bert, the administrator of his late brother’s estate, acknowledged that a jury could have found that the police acted in an “objectively reasonable” manner given the circumstances.
Richard O’Bert’s three children are to divide $35,278 among them, according to court documents.
The law firm representing the O’Bert estate, Donovan and O’Connor of Bennington, collected a $46,000 fee plus $18,271 in expenses.
The Probate Court has scheduled a hearing Tuesday to review the distribution to the children.
“We just want to close it out,” Debbie Briggs, the court’s register, said of the case.
The O’Bert family’s lawyer, Christopher Dodig, notified the Bennington Superior Court earlier this year that his firm took a 46 percent contingency fee.
It accepted less than the 49 percent originally agreed upon as “a courtesy to the clients,” Dodig wrote. “Hourly charges would have substantially exceeded $46,000.”
The firm usually takes a 33 percent contingency fee, or 40 percent if the case goes to appeal. In the O’Bert case, the fee agreement was 42 percent and 49 percent, because the family asked that the law firm pay all expenses, among other reasons, according to Dodig.
O’Bert’s three children, Teena O’Bert, 33, Edward O’Bert, 22, and Matthew Bouchard, 18, all of Pittsfield, Mass., were living apart from their father when he died.