Nick Nolte will probably opt to stay home the next time his kid throws a party.
The Affliction star has reached a settlement with the parents of a teenage girl who said that she was date-raped during a party at the actor's Malibu home. The family sued Nolte on their now-18-year-old daughter's behalf in 2004, and the case was headed to trial after a judge refused to dismiss the lawsuit last month.
Details of the settlement agreement were not available, and Nolte's attorney, Dean Olson, couldn't be reached for comment, but a notice that an agreement had been arrived at was filed last Thursday in Santa Monica Superior Court. A final pretrial hearing had been scheduled for Tuesday.
Nolte's son, Brawley, who was also named in the suit, was the one who hosted the shindig in January 2003. His dad wasn't home, but the plaintiffs alleged that the elder Nolte was "liable for damages because his home has had "a long history of furnishing drugs and/or alcohol to minors."
As a result of the night in question, Brawley's twentysomething friend, Nicholas Woodring, pleaded no contest in 2004 to a misdemeanor count of having sex with a minor and was sentenced to six months in jail.
But the girl, who was 15 at the time, also claimed in her family's suit that Woodring--with Brawley's help--slipped GHB (the so-called "date-rape drug") into her drink and then had sex with her.
The Nolte men stated in court documents that they had been targeted only because of their "star power" and "deep pockets."
This settlement leaves Nolte's legal docket refreshingly clear. A Malibu judge ruled in January that the Prince of Tides player had successfully completed three years of probation, during which he served time in rehab for drug and alcohol addiction, attended counseling and apparently passed the random drug tests he was forced to take.
Whether or not it was true that Nolte's home helped foster the drug use of minors, it did have a history of furnishing drugs and/or alcohol to Nolte himself. He pleaded no contest in 2002 to driving under the influence of that pesky GHB. The 65-year-old actor's attorney has maintained that his client ingested the drug by accident as part of a weightlifting supplement.