Last May, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington filed a defamation lawsuit against his former girlfriend, Jennifer Allen. Allen had accused Arrington of rape on social media and declined to retract her statements.
The lawsuit Arrington filed has now been dropped. It's been "dismissed with prejudice," meaning Allen can't be sued by Arrington again for those same rape comments. Valleywag's Sam Biddle, who found the latest court filing, suggests a settlement may be in the works.
We reached out to Arrington for comment. He says he has a blog post coming. When that's up, we'll update our post.
Here's the backstory on the dispute between Allen and Arrington, which led to the defamation suit:
On March 29, 2013, Jenn Allen posted a statement on Facebook that accused Arrington of physical and emotional abuse. Allen alleged that Arrington "threatened to murder her if she told anyone" about the way he treated her.
News of Allen's post quickly spread to media outlets, most notably Gawker, which addressed Allen's post and did some further research into the allegations. Allen responded multiple times on the Gawker articles with messages that further blemished Arrington's reputation.
Arrington's lawyer asked Allen to write a public retraction of her "defamatory" statements by close of business on April 15 2013. Allen didn't.
The lawsuit was then filed against her. Arrington's version of events were detailed in the 43-page document, which can be found here.