Photo:Kevin Mazur/Getty
Kevin Mazur/Getty
Chip Gaines' former Magnolia Real Estate partners filed a $1 million lawsuit against him in April 2017 that was dismissed in 2020, and he countersued alleging defamation.
Gaines has reportedly reached an out-of-court settlement with his former partners, John L. Lewis and Richard L. Clark, in regard to his defamation claim, according toKWTX.
Both Chip’s attorneys, Todd Patterson and Kyrie Cameron, and Lewis and Clark’s attorney, John Mabry, did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Cindy Ord/Getty
According to the Waco, Texas-based news station, the agreement both parties made “dismisses all claims and appeals in the case, including a potential appeal of 170th State District Judge Jim Meyer’s ruling in February 2020 that threw out Lewis and Clark’s original lawsuit against Gaines.”
Before reaching the confidential agreement, both parties were expected for a jury trial on the defamation countersuit in Waco where Chip and Joanna havebuilt their Magnolia empire. The case never made it to trial after it was allegedly settled.
When the initial lawsuit was first filed in 2017, one of Lewis and Clark’s attorneys at the time, David Tekell,spoke to PEOPLEabout the matter.
Chip briefly addressed the legal matter on Twitter shortly after Lewis and Clark, or his “friends” as he refers to them in the tweet, filed the lawsuit — which seemingly came as a shock to him.
“Fyi: Ive had the same cell # 15 yrs.. same email for 20 yrs. No one called or emailed? 4 years later “friends” reach out via lawsuit.. Humm,” he wrote.
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Lewis toldPEOPLEthat he and Clark had been transparent about the potential lawsuit and that his attorney had reached out to Chip during summer 2016.
“We were doing everything we could in an attempt to resolve this matter privately,” Lewis said. “We waited as long as we could before having to file this lawsuit.”
source: people.com
