WASHINGTON (AP) – Shirley Sherrod, the former Agriculture Department official whose supposed racist remarks on video ignited a firestorm in 2010, has reached a tentative settlement with the widow of a conservative blogger who posted the edited images, a federal judge said Tuesday.
Sherrod sued blogger Andrew Breitbart and his colleague Larry O’Connor in 2011, a year after Breitbart posted the video of Sherrod, who is black. She sued Breitbart and O’Connor for defamation and emotional distress after USDA officials asked her to resign from her post as a rural development official in Georgia and the video ignited a racial firestorm.
Breitbart died unexpectedly in 2012, but his wife, Susannah, was substituted as a defendant.
U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon on Tuesday ordered the case halted “in light of the parties’ representations that a settlement has been reached” and the agreement circulated for signatures.
The terms of the settlement have so far remained confidential. Lawyers for Sherrod and Susannah Breitbart did not respond to a request for comment on the settlement; an attorney for O’Connor declined to comment.