New York, june 26: Television network NBC has settled a lawsuit brought by the family of a man who killed himself when confronted with cameras for the TV show "To Catch a Predator," The New York Times reported on Thursday.

"The matter has been amicably resolved to the satisfaction of both parties," NBC spokeswoman Jenny Tartikoff said in a statement, the Times reported. The network would not say how much the General Electric Co unit paid, the paper said.

The family of Louis W Conradt Jr sued NBC for USD105 million last year after the assistant district attorney in Rockwall County, Texas, had reportedly sent sexually explicit messages to a person that he believed was under-age.

The person actually was a volunteer for Perverted Justice, a group that helps set up stings to catch child sexual predators and was a paid consultant for the Predator series, the Times said.

The premise of the show "To Catch a Predator" is that someone poses as an underaged girl in an Internet chat room, and then lures men who want to meet them to a house. Instead of finding the girl, they are confronted by the TV show`s host and a camera crew. The show has raised ethical questions over the program`s "all-access arrangement with the local police and Perverted Justice", the Times said.

In Conradt`s case, local police decided to arrest him at his home after he did not show up at the pre-arranged house, the Times said. As the police and camera crews entered the house, Conradt shot himself in the head, the paper said.

In February a judge dismissed some of the lawsuit`s claims, but declared that a jury "could find that NBC crossed the line from responsible journalism to irresponsible and reckless intrusion into law enforcement," the Times reported.

Bureau Report