Nancy Grace Not Off The Hook For Woman's Suicide

Posted by Eriq Gardner

Florida federal Judge Willliam Terrell Hodges is allowing a case to continue against CNN Headline News show host Nancy Grace that alleges her "outrageous conduct such as severe interrogation" led to the suicide of a Florida woman, Melinda Duckett.

Duckett shot herself after producers of the show lured her on to talk about the disappearance of her son, Trenton, and Grace very nearly blamed her for her son's disappearance.

In moving to dismiss, CNN and Grace raised a First Amendment defense: "The law does not permit people to recover money from reporters who ask routine questions while covering stories of national significance to the public. Plaintiffs have no valid cause of action, and this misguided lawsuit should be dismissed.”

In his ruling, Judge Hodges acknowledged that the plaintiff will have to satisfy the state of Florida's "very high standard for claims of emotional distress," but that the case couldn't be dismissed quite yet without further evidence.

We'll have to see whether CNN has the guts to try the case and risk bad precedent, or pay out like NBC did in a similar lawsuit over its ""Dateline: To Catch a Predator" show.

Comments

[James]

I AM SO THRILLED TO HEAR ABOUT THIS. It's about time that Nancy Grace pay for her actions, this woman committed suicide after Nancy berated her on the air. It was bad enough that this woman's child was missing, but she made it like it was her fault.

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[jonathan Sullivan]

Bad week for Nancy, in addition to the Duckett lost, she was parodied in the new novel "Sex with THE Virgin Mary" by Charles Webb. She runs her TV circus in a criminal fraud trial where Jimmy Cahill is accused of selling a bogus right to 'deflower' the Blessed Mother to a man here on earth to be used after the purchaser dies a natural death. The Roman Catholic Church is not amused. www.thekickasspress.com

Sex With THE Virgin Mary: She has waited long enough