JAY REEVES
Associated Press
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday ended the on-again, off-again lawsuit filed by “To Kill a Mockingbird” author Harper Lee against a museum in her south Alabama hometown, which inspired the setting of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
U.S. District Judge William H. Steele of Mobile dismissed the case in a one-sentence order after lawyers for both Lee and the Monroe County Heritage Museum filed a joint motion seeking to end the suit. Lee last year accused the museum of taking advantage of her work by selling souvenirs and using the title of her only published book as its website address.
The judge said the 88-year-old Lee and the museum each had to pay their own costs and attorney fees, but the order didn’t reveal the amounts or any settlement terms.
In a statement, museum attorney Matthew Goforth said the agreement was confidential. He apologized on behalf of the museum for any suggestion “that Miss Lee is not in control of her own business affairs,” as some have publicly suggested.
“To the extent that such an inference has been made, that inference is not proper and it is the museum’s opinion that Miss Lee is very much in control of her business affairs,” the statement said.
The dismissal came two weeks after the judge reinstated the lawsuit at the request of the author from Monroeville, Alabama, which inspired the fictional town of Maycomb in her only published book.
The author and the museum settled the case in February, but the agreement was never signed and the case restarted in May, with Lee’s lawyers filing papers saying they had asked the museum to turn over documents and answer a series of questions.
Lee apparently got at least one of her wishes from the suit: The museum has changed its website name to http://www.monroecountymuseum.org from tokillamockingbird.com.
Published in 1960, “Mockingbird” tells the story of small-town attorney Atticus Finch, his two children and the struggle against racial prejudice and injustice in the Jim Crow South. Considered a modern classic, the book was turned into a movie of the same name starring Gregory Peck, who became friends with Lee.
The set for the movie’s dramatic courtroom scene recreated the Monroe County Courthouse, where the museum is located. The museum includes a gift shop that has sold book-related souvenirs including clothing.
Lee, who split her time between Alabama and New York for years, had a stroke and now lives fulltime in Monroeville.
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