Last year a California jury in a racial discrimination suit against Interstate Bakeries Corp. awarded the plaintiffs $132 million, the second-largest award in U.S. legal history involving a private company accused of such wrongdoing. Now the case has been quietly mediated and settled, with all terms remaining confidential.

"I have absolutely nothing to say about this case," said Angela Alioto, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs.

The same message was conveyed by Interstate?s in-house legal counsel, Ray Sandy Sutton.

But a hint of final damages can be found in the company?s quarterly earnings report released Wednesday.

In that report, the company said it took a one-time charge of $25.7 million. That charge involved the shutdown of a bakery in Detroit and "a settlement, through mediation, of the San Francisco, California, lawsuit," according to an Interstate press release.

The monetary damages, through a series of court proceedings, had already been knocked down to $29.3 million earlier this year.

Wall Street analyst Mitch Pinherio of Janney Montgomery Scott said his best guess was that the charges associated with closing Interstate?s Detroit bakery totaled about $5 million.

If Pinherio is in the ballpark, that means damages paid to the group of plaintiffs alleging discrimination against Interstate totaled about $20 million.

Whatever the final outcome, the case had some titillating twists along the way, including accusations by Interstate?s attorneys that at least half the jurors were imbibing alcohol during breaks, some during deliberations.

"This defendant - and the people of the state of California - were and are entitled to the assurance that the jury?s freakish verdict was a product of judicial proof rather than distillery proof," the company stated last year in a motion asking for a new trial.

The motion alleged that five or six of the jurors "drank both beer and hard liquor during breaks."

"At least on individual had multiple drinks in such sessions. The drinking occurred during deliberations," the motion said.

To which Alioto, at the time, replied: "It?s not illegal to have a beer at lunch. If every person in that courthouse who had a drink at lunch didn?t come back, the courthouse would be empty in the afternoon."