Conan O’Brien settles joke-theft lawsuit weeks before trial
SAN DIEGO — Conan O’Brien has made peace with a man who heckled him not from the crowd but the courts.
O’Brien and several co-defendants, including his writing staff, agreed Thursday to settle a 2015 lawsuit with California writer Robert Kaseberg, who alleged the talk-show host stole five jokes from his Twitter feed and blog for O’Brien’s monologues on his TBS show, “Conan.”
Attorneys for both sides filed documents in San Diego federal court announcing a deal had been reached about three weeks before a trial that would have seen O’Brien, his sidekick Andy Richter and other famous names called to the stand. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The joke-theft case was rare from the start, and O’Brien also gave it an unusual ending, explaining why he settled at length in a column in Variety rather than opting for the confidentiality common in Hollywood lawsuits.