Threatened with a federal lawsuit alleging rampant copyright violations by Houston ISD educators, the school district’s leaders could have paid $250,000 in 2016 to avoid litigation with DynaStudy, a two-person educational materials supplier.

Instead, HISD officials rejected the offer and did not counter, triggering a three-year legal battle that ended last month with a $9.2 million jury verdict against the district.

Leading up to the verdict, the largest against HISD in recent years, district officials turned down at least four opportunities to settle DynaStudy’s copyright claims for significantly less money than jurors awarded in May, according to newly filed court documents. After HISD rejected the offers and took the case to trial, the jury found dozens of HISD employees repeatedly violated federal law by copying, manipulating and widely sharing DynaStudy’s printed educational guides during a decade-long period.

In addition to the jury award, the district could be ordered to pay DynaStudy’s attorneys’ fees, which totaled nearly $1.5 million.

It remained unclear Wednesday whether HISD would appeal the verdict.

HISD’s elected school board is responsible for approving all legal settlements in consultation with the district’s lawyers. However, four HISD trustees who served on the board in 2015 and 2016, when DynaStudy twice offered to settle the matter without litigation, said Wednesday that they do not recall receiving information about the negotiations.

DynaStudy initially proposed terms that required HISD to pay $100,000 and buy a three-year company license worth $305,000. The company later pitched the $250,000 settlement about three weeks before filing the lawsuit.

Two current trustees said the board was briefed about the case and potential settlements this year — DynaStudy made offers of about $3.9 million and $4.2 million — but did not approve the proposals. HISD countered the company’s two pretrial offers with a proposal of $800,000, DynaStudy’s lawyers said.

DynaStudy officials initially alleged four violations of federal copyright laws, leading to the relatively modest six-figure settlement proposals. However, the company’s lawyers later discovered dozens of additional copyright violations during the evidence-gathering process, prompting the multimillion-dollar settlement offers. In two cases, teachers used white tape and a pink sticky note to cover copyright notices. In another case, a teacher wrote in an email that she was “OK with violating” copyrights, adding “lol” at the end of her message.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Jurors find HISD repeatedly violated copyright laws, owes $9.2M

In a court filing Monday, DynaStudy’s lawyers argued HISD “never made a serious effort to settle given the facts of the case,” forcing the company to risk time and money litigating in federal court. DynaStudy first raised concerns with HISD about potential copyright concerns in 2012, several years after the company began selling dozens of study guides to the district.

“It appears that HISD’s motivation was to make the process too expensive for DynaStudy to survive it, as evidenced by its low offers of settlement, its numerous motions and filings, and its resistance to discovery,” Gary Sorden, a Dallas-based lawyer representing DynaStudy, wrote in the Monday filing.

In an interview Wednesday, HISD Board President Diana Dávila said trustees and the district’s legal counsel had “several discussions” about the case leading up to trial. She declined to describe the conversations, which took place during closed-door executive sessions outside public view.

“Our very last discussion was very brief, something about how we’re going to court this week,” Dávila said. “In hindsight, knowing how big of a case this is, it would have been well worth having additional meetings to discuss this case.”

HISD Trustee Rhonda Skillern-Jones, who has served on the board since DynaStudy’s initial settlement offer, said her earliest recollection of the case dates back to 2018. Skillern-Jones said her decision on legal matters is based on information provided by lawyers and “what they think the best course of action is.”

“If we’re looking to find fault or blame, painting a picture that somebody misstepped along the way, that is not correct,” Skillern-Jones said. “Things happen in court every day. You never know what juries are going to do. You never know what judges are going to do.”

Former HISD school board member Harvin Moore, who served from 2003 to 2016, said threats of litigation and six-figure settlement offers traditionally were presented to board members for consideration. Moore joined Dávila, Skillern-Jones and former trustee Anna Eastman in declaring they could not remember any discussions about DynaStudy’s pretrial offers.

“I do remember a lot of things, but I just don’t remember that,” Moore said. “That would certainly be the sort of thing we would want to see.”

On HoustonChronicle.com: Activist sues HISD after ban from district premises

HISD administrators did not respond to written questions about the case Wednesday, including whether trustees were briefed about the pretrial settlement offers. District officials have not said whether they plan to appeal the verdict. Dávila said trustees have not yet discussed the outcome with district counsel.

Throughout the lawsuit, HISD’s lawyers argued staffers engaged in “fair use” of reproduced work or were not aware of copyright violations. In a statement last month, district administrators said all employees now participate in online training on copyright laws at the beginning of each school year, with principals receiving additional in-person training.

DynaStudy, a 13-year-old firm with two full-time staffers and an undisclosed number of contractors, has sold colorful study guides and other education materials to about half of Texas’ 1,200 school districts, company officials said. DynaStudy’s sales with HISD fell from about $125,000 to $25,000 in the years after teachers began illegally copying study guides, the company’s lawyers wrote.

Although the verdict far exceeded the company’s revenue losses, such outcomes are common in cases in which violators knowingly and intentionally break copyright laws, said Jeff Slattery, an instructional associate professor and director of the Intellectual Property and Technology Clinics at Texas A&M University.

“That’s what really drives those amounts,” Slattery said. “Documentation of awareness that copyright protection existed and removal of that copyright has been established as the highest proof of infringement by the courts.”

jacob.carpenter@chron.com