Doe v. Kogut
- Sarah Netburn
- 1:15-cv-07726
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Doe v. Kogut, Judge Netburn ordered Kogut to pay Doe the $10,000 settlement after rejecting his unproven breach defense.
Jane Doe was entitled to receive the $10,000 settlement payment, and Steven Kogut was ordered to pay it. The court did not decide whether Doe could continue proceeding anonymously.
What happened
In Jane Doe v. Steven Kogut, the parties had reached an oral settlement requiring Steven Kogut to pay Jane Doe $10,000. The court and the appeals court had already ruled that the settlement was binding and enforceable.
Jane Doe asked the court to enforce the judgment because Kogut had not paid. Kogut argued that he should not have to pay because Doe had breached the agreement by failing to withdraw a Family Court petition.
Judge Sarah Netburn granted Doe’s motion to enforce the settlement. The court found that Kogut had not proved, by the required standard, that Doe breached the agreement and ordered him to pay the $10,000 settlement. The court did not decide whether Doe could continue proceeding anonymously.
The detailed version
- Doe v. Kogut · No. 1:15-cv-07726
- Sarah Netburn
- Oct. 9, 2020
Background
The parties appeared at a settlement conference in October 2016 and reached an oral settlement whose terms were stated on the record. After Doe retained new counsel, she argued that the agreement was not binding or enforceable. Kogut moved to enforce it, and the court granted that motion in April 2017. The Court of Appeals later affirmed the judgment for Kogut and confirmed that the parties had entered a binding settlement agreement.
The settlement required Kogut to pay Doe $10,000. In March 2019, Doe moved to enforce the judgment because Kogut had not paid. Kogut opposed the motion, arguing that Doe had breached the agreement by failing to withdraw a petition pending in Family Court. The court gave Kogut an opportunity to provide evidence supporting that claim.
Analysis
The court treated Kogut’s breach argument as an affirmative defense rather than a counterclaim. An affirmative defense is a reason why a defendant says the plaintiff should not receive the requested relief. The party asserting that defense bears the burden of proving it.
Kogut pointed to the fact that a trial on Doe’s Family Court petition occurred in September 2017. The court found that the trial, by itself, did not prove that Doe materially breached the settlement agreement. The court also considered statements by Doe’s lawyer at a November 2016 status conference, but found that those statements did not prove that Doe failed to withdraw the petition or that she did so intentionally. The circumstantial evidence did not establish the alleged breach by a preponderance of the evidence, meaning that it did not show that the breach was more likely than not.
Ruling
The court granted Doe’s motion to enforce the settlement agreement. It found that Kogut had not proved his affirmative defense and ordered him to pay the agreed $10,000 settlement sum. The court assumed that the order resolved all matters before it and declined to decide whether Doe should be allowed to continue proceeding anonymously. The Clerk of Court was directed to mail Kogut a copy of the order.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.