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World & Nation

Verne Troyer drops lawsuit over sex tape

By Harriet Ryan
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Actor Verne Troyer dropped his $20-million lawsuit against a celebrity sex-tape broker and an adult film distributor Friday after they agreed not to market a video of him having sex with a former girlfriend.

“We got what we wanted: a permanent injunction,” said Edwin F. McPherson, an attorney for the actor best known for playing Mini Me in the “Austin Powers” films.

Troyer also abandoned his suit against the gossip site www.TMZ.com, which had posted clips of the video.

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According to terms of the settlement filed in federal court, broker Kevin Blatt and distributor SugarDVD are barred from selling the video without permission from Troyer and his ex-girlfriend, Ranae Shrider.

McPherson said Troyer wanted the video to remain private and would never agree to a sale.

Blatt has said that Shrider approached him to sell the video but that he declined because Troyer did not consent.

Attorneys for Shrider and SugarDVD did not return calls seeking comment.

-- Harriet Ryan

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World & Nation
Harriet Ryan

Harriet Ryan is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the paper in 2008, she has written about high-profile people, including Phil Spector, Michael Jackson and Tom Girardi, and institutions, including USC, the State Bar of California, the Catholic Church, the Kabbalah Centre and Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin. Ryan won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting with colleagues Matt Hamilton and Paul Pringle in 2019. She and Hamilton won the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability in 2023. She previously worked at Court TV and the Asbury Park Press. She is a graduate of Columbia University.

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