I signed up just to correct some misconceptions here.
There was clearly some sort of tolling in place that we never picked up on, otherwise both defendants would have raised it as an issue,
The legal documents went over this.
The Illinois complaint was brief about it:
Illinois Complaint said:
On September 26, 2022, upon remand to the California trial court, Avellone filed a request for voluntary dismissal of the California case without prejudice so he could re-file the action in Illinois. The dismissal was entered on September 28, 2022.
As a quick search for "Illinois savings statute" will tell you:
Section 13-217, known as the “savings statute,” provides a plaintiff with a one-time right to refile a claim that has been voluntarily dismissed or dismissed for want of prosecution within one year of the entry of the dismissal order or within the remaining period of limitation, whichever is greater.
Avellone had 1 year during which he was allowed to refile his lawsuit in Illinois.
For Oklahoma it was more complicated. The argument made in the legal docs was that he did not discover her accusations until a few months later because Kelly had hidden her identity while making them and then shortly afterwards made her Twitter account private. Kelly's lawyer kept poking holes in this and they had a long back and forth about it (with a motion to dismiss, an amended petition, a motion to dismiss the amended petition, etc.) before the trial judge decided to let the trial go forward, at which point Kelly's lawyer decided to stall it by making counterclaims about Avellone.
While very little had occurred in the second lawsuit against Karissa (the only document she filed was an answer).
This is not true. A date for a jury trial had been set and discovery was set to be finished by mid-Summer:
SCHEDULING ORDER: Discovery due by July 24, 2023; dispositive motions due by August 8, 2023; Final Pretrial Conference set for November 29, 2023, at 1:30 p.m. in the Benton Courthouse before Judge Staci M. Yandle; jury trial set for December 11, 2023, at 9:00 a.m. in the Benton Courthouse before Judge Staci M. Yandle. The Scheduling Conference set for January 27, 2023 is VACATED. Signed by Judge Staci M. Yandle on 12/27/2022. (Attachments: # 1 Joint Report of Parties). (jlpe). (Entered: 12/27/2022)
Why would the hoes suddenly agree to an unfavorable settlement in this situation?
Because discovery had either started or was imminent in the Illinois lawsuit and there was probably some bad stuff about the women that was going to come out.
Or maybe Eric Kain fucked up his reporting and the settlement isn't actually as unfavorable to them as described?
He had a verbatim quote from Avellone's lawyer:
“The settlement agreement provides for a seven-figure payment to Mr. Avellone,” Avellone’s attorney confirmed to me via email.
After that, Kotaku's Ethan Gach — who was one of the first people to originally report on the accusations and even interviewed Karissa — contacted Chris for comment directly and reported:
That settlement includes the return of an attorney fee award previously entered in California against Avellone, as well as a “seven-figure payment” to him from Barrows and Bristol, Avellone told Kotaku in an email.
