Settlement is reached in Bryant case

A civil lawsuit against the Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant brought by a woman who said he raped her in a Colorado hotel quietly folded on Wednesday with a one-paragraph declaration that the parties had reached a settlement. No terms were disclosed.

A criminal charge of sexual assault against Mr. Bryant was dropped in September when the woman said she no longer wished to participate in the case. She had meanwhile sought unspecified monetary damages against him in the civil suit. The lawyers for both sides issued a statement saying that the matter had been ''resolved to the satisfaction of both parties,'' and that ''no further comments about the matter can or will be made.''

Legal experts said the inconclusive end to both cases stemmed from the same issue: one side or the other, or perhaps both, did not want the matter to unfold in public.

The final combination -- dropped charges, a public apology, and now the out-of-court settlement of the civil case -- struck some scholars as a rough approximation of justice, however inconclusive it might seem under the strict parameters of the law or public resolution of the issues.

''Criminal justice can only bring a certain kind of closure to a matter,'' said Peter A. Joy, a professor at the Washington University school of law in St. Louis. ''There's another kind of closure that costs money in our society.''

•	Settlement Is Reached In Bryant Case New York Times, Thursday, March 3, 2005 Byline: Kirk Johnson