That’s what media critic Dan Kennedy (Dec. 21) calls an excerpt from one of the handwritten letters that Boston judge Ernest Murphy sent to Boston Herald publisher Pat Purcell following Murphy’s securing of a libel judgment of more than $2 million against the newspaper (Dec. 8). One of the letters proposes to Purcell an “AB-SO-LUTE-LY confidential and ‘off the record'” meeting which he is not to tell Brown Rudnick, the newspaper’s chief legal counsel, about.

So here’s the deal. I’d like to meet with you at the Union Club on Monday, March 7….You will bring to that meeting a cashier’s check, payable to me, in the sum of $3,260,000. No check, no meeting.

And Dan Kennedy comments:

This much is certain: If Murphy’s letters are typical of what takes place between parties in a lawsuit, then the legal sausage-making process is a lot uglier than many of us realize.

(via Romenesko, who has links to the Boston press coverage). Boston Phoenix media critic Mark Jurkowitz also covers the story here and (Murphy’s lawyer’s response) here. A Jurkowitz commenter observes: “Settlement discussions are frequently unsightly — they often have a ‘Surrender, Dorothy’ flavor.”

Filed under: Boston, libel slander and defamation, Massachusetts, newspapers