Legal News

NBC Sued for Suicide of Alleged Pedophile Prosecutor

By Dan Slater

On the afternoon of November 5, a camera crew from the “To Catch a Predator” series, produced by investigative reporter Chris Hansen, accompanied a SWAT team to the house of a Texas prosecutor, Louis William Conradt Jr. Since 2004, the TV program has worked with local police departments and an online watchdog group called Perverted Justice that provides “decoys” — adults who pose as teenage boys — to lure suspected pedophiles to so-called sting houses.

Condradt, a five-term district attorney, had been an assistant prosecutor when he allegedly contacted a decoy who’d been posing as a 13 year-old boy. Using this information, police obtained search and arrest warrants for Conradt, and went to his home, with Hansen and camera crew in tow. Members of the SWAT team barged into the house and reportedly saw Conradt step into a room and say, “I’m not going to hurt anyone.” He then shot himself with a handgun. On camera, a police officer reported this to Hansen, and then allegedly said, “That’ll make good TV.” (Here’s a report from the NYLJ.)

Now, Condradt’s sister is suing NBC in the Southern District of New York for $100 million, claiming, among other things, intentional infliction of emotional distress. In rejecting NBC’s 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, Judge Denny Chin wrote that if the allegations are proved true, a jury could find that “NBC crossed the line from responsible journalism to irresponsible and reckless intrusion into law enforcement.” (Here’s Chin’s decision denying the motion to dismiss.)

The Conradt family’s lawyer, Bruce Baron, of Baron Associates in Brooklyn, said the decision “sends a strong message to law enforcement throughout this country: Never subcontract your uniform, badge and the oath you take.”

NBC argued that it owed no duty to protect Conradt from killing himself and that its alleged conduct was not “extreme and dangerous” so as to meet the standard under Texas law for intentional infliction of emotional distress. The network is represented by NBC in-house media lawyer Hillary Lane; and Amanda Leith and Lee Levine of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz.

Chin dismissed many of Conradt’s claims, but the principal claims — such as the IIED claim, and a Fourth Amendment claim — survived. Chin wrote: “Rather than merely report on law enforcement’s efforts to combat crime, NBC purportedly instigated and then placed itself squarely in the middle of a police operation, pushing police to engage in tactics that were unnecessary and unwise, solely to generate more dramatic footage for a television show.” Chin added that a jury could find there was no need for a SWAT team to extract a 56-year-old prosecutor from his home when he was not accused of actual violence, and that this was done solely ‘to sensationalize and enhance the entertainment value’ of the arrest.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 27, 2008 (boomark / email).