Aniston, Paparazzo Make a Deal

Actress agrees to drop lawsuit against photog Peter Brandt in return for his promise never to sell topless photos of her

By Sarah Hall Sep 02, 2006 1:45 AMTags

Jennifer Aniston and a paparazzo she sued for snapping topless photos of her have reached a tit-for-tat agreement.

"It's a confidential settlement," Aniston attorney John Lavely said Friday. "The matter was amicably resolved."

While Lavely refused to go into the specifics, photog Peter Brandt released a statement saying the former Friends star agreed to drop her lawsuit against him in return for his promise that he would never publish the images.

The 37-year-old star sued Brandt last December after the shutterbug mailed out copies of the revealing photos to several celebrity magazine editors, along with shots of the actress canoodling with then-new squeeze, Vince Vaughn.

In response, Lavely sent out a warning letter to various celebrity publications, threatening legal action against any who dared run the unauthorized snaps, and filed suit against Brandt for invading the actress' privacy by using a "powerful telephoto lens" to photograph her in her own home "from a great distance through invasive, intrusive and unlawful measures."

In her legal documents, Aniston claimed to have suffered "shame, mortification, hurt feelings, emotional distress, anger, embarrassment, humiliation, feeling of being violated and injury to her privacy and peace of mind," as a result of the photos.

In his own defense, Brandt claimed that he was only trying to cash in on photos of Aniston and her friend--as opposed to Aniston's "friends."

"What I was trying to sell was the pictures of Vince and her...Sending the topless pictures along with [the other photos] was maybe my mistake," Brandt told ABC News Radio in December. "But I wasn't intending to sell those."

The photographer claimed he was taken by surprise when the actress appeared in his viewfinder sans top, but denied that he was trespassing at the time he caught his eyeful.

"She's the one who went out there topless," Brandt said. "I didn't go looking for it."

He said he was standing about 300 yards away from Aniston's Hollywood Hills home, on a public street at the time he took the shots.

In a statement Friday, the photographer's rep reiterated Brandt did nothing illegal to obtain the images.

"Even though they were legally obtained (no trees were climbed or trespassing done), Peter pulled the photos from publication," the statement read.

It's not the first time the actress has gone to court in an attempt to keep her private parts under cover.

In 2003, she was awarded $550,000 from a man accused of circulating pictures of her sunbathing topless that were taken circa 1999.

Aniston also settled with two U.S. publications that ran the photos, accepting undisclosed damages from Celebrity Skin and High Society in 2002. She first sued the mags in 2000, just days after she wed Brad Pitt.

Fast forward six years later and Pitt's out of the picture. Aniston's breasts, on the other hand, are still getting caught on film.