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The details of a near 20-year old labor settlement were revealed last week when a United States District Court judge ruled favorably in response to a 2016 motion filed by Time Inc. and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, stating that the “right to know” of court proceedings in the settlement of a class-action case was bolstered by the involvement of the “now-president of the United States.” It revealed that defendant Donald Trump, who has often claimed to never settle lawsuits and who has made immigration restriction one of his campaign priorities, quietly reached a $1.375 million settlement agreement in 1998 to end the class-action suit Hardy v. Kaszycki – a case brought by undocumented Polish workers laboring for Kaszycki & Sons. 200 undocumented and non-unionized Polish laborers had worked in 12-hour shifts without gloves, hard hats or masks in a dusty, asbestos-ridden environment, and were paid as little as $4 an hour, less than half the union wage, in order to demolish the Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue so that construction could begin quickly on the now signature Trump Tower. When Kaszycki stopped paying wages, the workers brought suit, and what followed was years of litigation where Trump often denied knowing that illegal immigrants were working for him, despite numerous witness testimonies to the contrary.