Settlement reached in Heath Ledger video case
A freelance reporter has settled her lawsuit against a photo agency and two paparazzi whom she accused of invading her privacy by surreptitiously videotaping her and the late actor Heath Ledger in a hotel room strewn with cocaine, her attorney said today.
The lawyer declined to discuss the terms of the settlement. “The matter has been resolve is all anybody can say,” Neville Johnson said. The reporter, identified in papers only as “Jane Doe,” alleged in her suit that two employees of Splash News, one of whom she was dating, befriended Ledger during a party she was covering at Chateau Marmont hotel by posing as hotel guests and offering him cocaine.
She alleged they brought him to her hotel room and then secretly taped her and him as they talked. After Ledger’s death from an overdose of prescription medicine a year ago, Splash sold the tape to news outlets. Splash’s lawyers had argued the woman suffered no damage because the agency blurred her face before distributing the video.
-- Harriet Ryan
Photo: Los Angeles Times
