From Don Logana at WTOC, Settlement reached in Paula Deen lawsuit [Update: see further statement from WTOC below]:
Matt Billips, the attorney for the plaintiff Lisa Jackson, said paperwork will be filed later Monday. A court threw out racial aspect of lawsuit on Monday morning.
I haven’t seen any other media outlets report on this news yet, so if there’s additional news this evening, I’ll update this post as necessary.
UPDATE: WTOC now says this on Facebook:
We reported earlier that Matt Billips, counsel Lisa Jackson in the case against Paula Deen, said that the case had been resolved and that paperwork would be filed later on Monday. Mr. Billips has retracted this statement.
The racial discrimination portions of the suit were thrown out by a judge earlier today, as many of us expected would happen eventually. From Judge dismisses racial claims in Paula Deen lawsuit at SavannahNow:
U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr., in a 20-page order filed today, ruled plaintiff Lisa Jackson did not allege she was the target of unlawful racial discrimination and did not suffer any adverse employment decision.
“Her difficulties do not fall within the zone of interests sought to be protected by Title VII and cannot support a claim of racial discrimination under the statute,†Moore ruled.
The plaintiff Jackson is white, as those who have followed this case should know.
A snippet from my July 4th post A few thoughts on the latest Paula Deen news and Bubba Hiers’ deposition:
Despite the general ugliness of this latest document, I’d say it’s possible that Deen and Hiers might even win this lawsuit at a trial largely on the grounds that Jackson was not truly harmed by the behavior she had to deal with.
But, really, why would anyone on the Deen legal team or PR team think this lawsuit was worth fighting? As I’ve said in previous posts, it should have been glaringly clear to any dispassionate advisor just how ugly this whole mess would get if Hiers’ and Deen’s depositions became public.
Even if there was some chance of the defendants winning the case, the ugly revelations about racial language and — especially — about the viewing of pornography in the workplace at Uncle Bubba’s were obviously going to make headlines at some point. Anyone should have been able to recognize that. Removing the racial aspect from the lawsuit does nothing to remove those elements from the depositions, and a prolonged court battle would have, with each day, delayed any chance for Deen to approach the PR problem proactively.
In other words, settling the case was the right thing to do the moment suit was filed, the right thing to do over the many months during which depositions were taken and evidence gathered, and the right thing to do right now.