Daniel Dale drops his defamation lawsuit against Rob Ford

After rejecting Rob Ford‘s initial attempt at an apology, Star reporter Daniel Dale says he’ll drop his defamation lawsuit against the mayor following the release of a written follow-up apology on Wednesday night. Dale’s notice of libel called for an apology to be given “publicly, abjectly, unreservedly and completely,” and the two-page statement, endorsed but clearly not written by Ford, definitely meets those criteria.

Referring to Ford’s insinuation, during a televised interview with Conrad Black, that he had caught Dale lurking in his backyard, taking pervy pictures of his kids, the apology says:

This recollection of the incident is inaccurate in that I never saw Mr. Dale standing on bricks or cinderblocks, never saw Mr. Dale looking over my fence and never saw Mr. Dale taking any pictures. There is no basis for saying as I did on December 17 and in the past that Mr. Dale was “lurking” or “leering” near or over my fence or behaving surreptitiously and I should not have said that.

During the incident in question, which happened in May 2012, Dale was in a park adjacent to the Ford family backyard, researching a story about the mayor’s attempt to buy a piece of public land.

The mayor also apologizes specifically for suggesting that Dale is a pedophile. “There was absolutely no basis for the statement I made about Mr. Dale taking pictures of children, or for any insinuations I made,” the statement says. “I should not have said what I did and I wholly retract my statements and apologize to Mr. Dale without reservation for what I said.”

The Star reports that Dale will also drop his lawsuit against ZoomerMedia, the owner of the TV station that broadcast the Black interview, after the company issued a short apology on Wednesday night.