Cintas Corp. has agreed to a pretrial settlement in a lawsuit that accused its top executives and eight board members of breaching their duties to shareholders and failing to effect company compliance with worker safety and employment laws.

It’s at least the second settlement deal Cintas has struck in the past month. In August it reached a tentative settlement of a class-action overtime lawsuit in California, agreeing to pay $24 million to avoid disruptive and potentially costly litigation, it said.

As part of the latest proposed settlement, negotiated with the South Carolina law firm Motley Rice LLC, Cintas has agreed to pay the firm $475,000 for fees and expenses. It also agreed to implement various changes in corporate governance related to monitoring safety and compliance with laws and policies related to safety.

The deal was approved by a special litigation committee of Cintas’s board formed earlier this year. It consists of the only two board members who were not named as defendants in the lawsuit. They are Ron Tysoe, who joined the board in January 2008, and former Procter & Gamble Co. legal chief James Johnson, who was added to the board earlier this year for the express purpose of serving on the litigation committee. The two-man panel was charged with investigating the allegations made in the Manville lawsuit and determining how the company should respond.

The $475,000 legal bill would be paid by Cintas’s insurance carrier. In the settlement agreement, Cintas officials deny that they breached any duty and state that they acted in good faith and with reasonable business judgment.

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