Wright State University settles civil lawsuit against WSARC, now doing business as Parallax Advanced Research Corporation

The Wright State University Office of General Counsel released the following statement:

Today, Wright State University received a $3 million payment from the Wright State Applied Research Corporation (WSARC), which is now doing business as Parallax Advanced Research Corporation. The payment was made pursuant to a negotiated settlement recently approved by the Ohio Court of Claims that ended a civil lawsuit filed in 2020 by Wright State University.

The University filed the lawsuit following an independent decision by WSARC, at the time an affiliate of the University, to separate its operations from Wright State, which resulted in a dispute over the method and manner of the departure.

The principal terms of the settlement are as follows:

1. Parallax to make a one-time cash payment of $3 million to Wright State.
2. Dismissal (with prejudice) of all claims and counterclaims asserted by either party in the lawsuit, with no admission of fault, liability or wrongdoing by any party.

3. Each party releases the other from all claims and grants limited releases of certain claims for one another’s personnel.

4. Wright State to permanently remove a media release entitled “Wright State University files civil lawsuit against WSARC” from the University’s Newsroom site.

5. The University will retain certain assets that the University asserted it owned, but it will agree to support any verified demand by the federal government for the return of any that constitute “government furnished equipment” under certain Parallax contracts.

For the University, the lawsuit was focused on recovering public funds and public assets. The cash payment represents a return of public funds that were used to support WSARC during its early years. University legal fees and expenses incurred during the lawsuit will be reimbursed by an existing insurance policy, resulting in modest out-of-pocket costs for the University itself.

The settlement does not address a nearly $1 million finding for recovery levied by the state auditor against Parallax CEO Dennis Andersh and certain others in 2019, which was often incorrectly assumed to be part of the original lawsuit.