At long last, the John Edwards “sex tape suit” drama is over (hopefully)

Whew:

The long-running court battle over a sexually explicit videotape featuring former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and his mistress, Rielle Hunter, has been settled out of court today and all copies of the tape will be destroyed, ABC News has learned.

According to North Carolina court officials and a Hunter spokesperson, Hunter and former Edwards’ aide Andrew Young, along with his wife Cheri, agreed to end their dispute more than two years after the case was originally filed. Under the terms of the settlement, all known copies of the sex tape are to be destroyed within 30 days. If other copies of the tape surface later, the agreement requires those to be destroyed as well.

The court determined that other disputed items in the case, including a series of intimate photos of Hunter and her daughter, belong to Ms. Hunter and would be turned over to her. The Youngs admitted no liability.

Hunter spokesperson RoseMarie Terenzio told ABC News today that ”Ms. Hunter is very pleased. She won.”
Hunter sued the Youngs in January 2010, claiming the couple had stolen from her a β€œpersonal and private” videotape that came to be known in court filings as β€œthe Edwards sex tape.” She asserted that the Youngs were using the tape to help promote Young’s book, β€œThe Politician,” which chronicles Edwards’ 2008 run for the Democratic presidential nomination and the candidate’s affair with Hunter.

Edwards gave a lengthy deposition in the case which eventually ended up in the hands of federal prosecutors who are pursuing a felony campaign finance case against the one-time North Carolina Senator. That trial had been scheduled to begin in January, but has been delayed because Edwards needs treatment for a heart condition.

β€œWe are extremely pleased to have this case resolved,” the Youngs said in a statement released by their lawyer today. β€œThere were no β€˜winners’ as such, in that each side had returned back to it that which it believed was its own property, although it was mutually agreed that certain materials should, per the court’s order, be destroyed.”

Please, please, please, please, please let all those tapes really and truly be destroyed. Not only because I’m sick of hearing about John Edwards, but I’d be doubly sick if a tape copy became public. Not just because I believe such things should be private, but – well – I really don’t want to stand at the checkout line in the grocery store and see a screencap of their “intimate moments” on the front page of the Enquirer.

Gag.

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