the law

Naomi Judd’s Family Has Filed to Dismiss Lawsuit Over Her Death Records

Photo: Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images for CMT

The family of Naomi Judd has filed to dismiss their lawsuit which sought to keep the late country singer’s death records private. The Associated Press is reporting that the dismissal is still subject to approval by a judge. Judd’s family originally objected to journalists accessing the police records of her death, which included body camera footage and audio recordings of surviving family. The filing said releasing the records to the public would incur “significant trauma and irreparable harm” to the family. At that time, Ashley Judd had written in the New York Times that “This profoundly intimate personal and medical information does not belong in the press, on the internet or anywhere except in our memories.” The motion to dismiss comes after journalists aren’t requesting photographs of the body or any body cam footage from police.

A Tennessee lawmaker also introduced legislation that would make private any death records wherein the death was not a result of a crime. Earlier this year, Ashley Judd’s NYT op-ed called for a reevaluation of how suicide investigations were conducted. “I want to be clear that the police were simply following terrible, outdated interview procedures,” she wrote, also stating that she felt “as if I was a possible suspect in my mother’s suicide.”

Naomi Judd’s Family Files to Dismiss Suit Over Death Records