NBC Settles Lawsuit Over Suicide Arising From "To Catch a Predator"

Posted by Eriq Gardner

NBC Universal isn't taking any chances with that $105 million lawsuit alleging that "Dateline: To Catch a Predator" led to the suicide of a Texas prosecutor, Louis William Conradt Jr.

NBC and the family of Conradt “amicably resolved" the lawsuit, both parties announced. Terms of the deal haven't been disclosed.

In February, a New York judge denied NBC's motion to dismiss, in which argued it owed no duty to protect him from suicide and its alleged conduct was not so "extreme and dangerous" that it met the standard under Texas law for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The judge ruled then that "a reasonable jury could find that there was no legitimate law enforcement need for a heavily armed SWAT team to extract a 56-year old prosecutor from his home when he was not accused of any actual violence and was not believed to have a gun, and that this was done solely "to sensationalize and enhance the entertainment value" of the arrest."

The suit was settled awhile back but nobody felt the need to go public. On June 3, a sealed document was submitted to the court. Only after being questioned by the L.A. Times did a NBC News spokeswoman admit that "the matter has been amicably resolved.”

Sounds like NBC doesn't really want to publicize the fact it paid Conradt's family to go away.

The Conradt family was represented by Bruce Baron of Baron Associates. NBC was represented by Amanda Leith and Lee Levine of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz.