The executive director of the Independent Glass Association said that, as recently as Monday of this week, attorneys from Safelite Glass Corporation were trying to keep IGA from filing its lawsuit (see The March to Court: The IGA Files Its Landmark Lawsuit in Federal Court ).

In a speech before the Minnesota Independent Auto Glass Association in St. Paul on Thursday afternoon, IGA executive director Marc Anderson said that the Columbus-based auto glass giant "tried to dissuade us from going forward."

Anderson said that legal counsel from Safelite contacted IGA's legal counsel on Monday and then contacted him directly on Tuesday saying both sides should meet and work out their differences. "I hope we still can do that," said Anderson. "It's unfortunate I heard from Safelite's counsel about this so late in the process. We did have some discussions and a meeting early on with Safelite. But by this week our board of directors had voted to file the suit, and I was unable to get a quorem to vote on Safelite's request."

Anderson said that "our goal is to stop illegal steering and however that can be accomplished, in or out of a court, is what we want to do. Accomplishing it with Safelite's cooperation would be best possible way to do so and we could both make the lawsuit go away."