Dan Whitcomb of Reuters reports a settlement in a precedent-setting case I’ve been covering for the past several years:
The family of a teen whose mangled corpse was shown in horrific car-crash photos that went viral online has settled a lawsuit against the California Highway Patrol for $2.37 million, ending a 5-year legal battle that changed state law.
The extremely graphic pictures, taken by investigators and leaked by two dispatchers, were posted across the Internet and used to taunt family members of 18-year-old Nicole “Nikki” Catsouras following her 2006 crash on an Orange County highway.
The settlement was made public by the highway patrol and an attorney for Catsouras’s parents and three sisters on Tuesday as a March trial date loomed in the long-running case.
Read more on WXXI.
The settlement, however, is not the end of the family’s struggle, as copies of the photos still appear on web sites, despite the family’s efforts to get them removed. The Highway Patrol will now assist in those efforts, which might actually help. If those photos were taken by the Highway Patrol, couldn’t they send web hosts DMCA takedown notices?
Links to previous coverage of the Catsouras case on this blog can be found here.