CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / LOS ANGELES
A freelance reporter has settled her lawsuit against a photo agency and two paparazzi 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 Tuesday.
The lawyer declined to discuss the terms of the settlement.
“The matter has been resolved is all anybody can say,” lawyer 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 the Chateau Marmont by posing as hotel guests and offering him cocaine.
She alleged they brought him to her hotel room and then secretly taped her and the actor 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 that the woman suffered no damage because the agency blurred her face before distributing the video.
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