The Boston Globe reports that the Turcotte family, which claimed author Augusten Burroughs defamed them in his best-selling book RUNNING WITH SCISSORS, has settled a lawsuit against the author and his publisher. Burroughs and his publisher, St. Martin’s Press, agree to call the work a “book” instead of “memoirs,” in the author’s note and to change the acknowledgments page in future editions to say that the Turcotte family’s memories of events he describes “are different than my own,” and expressing regret for “any unintentional harm” to them, according to Howard Cooper, an attorney for the family. He said financial terms of the settlement are confidential.
According to a statement from the family’s attorneys, Burroughs’ new acknowledgments note will say that the Turcottes “are each fine, decent, and hardworking people,” and that the book was not intended to hurt them. “With this settlement, together with our settlement with Sony last year, we have achieved everything we set out to accomplish when we filed suit two years ago,” the family said in the statement. “We have always maintained that the book is fictionalized and defamatory. This settlement is the most powerful vindication of those sentiments that we can imagine.”