Imus and CBS settle competing claims

NEW YORK – Don Imus has reached a settlement with CBS over his multimillion-dollar contract and is negotiating to resume his broadcasting career.

Imus and CBS Radio “have mutually agreed to settle claims that each had against the other regarding the Imus radio program on CBS,” the network and Imus’ attorney Martin Garbus said in a joint statement Tuesday.

The terms of the settlement will not be disclosed, according to the statement. CBS and Garbus confirmed only that the settlement had been reached.

The settlement pre-empts the dismissed radio personality’s threatened $120 million breach-of-contract lawsuit.

Meantime, Imus is talking to WABC-AM and other stations about making a possible comeback, a person familiar with the talks said. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details had not been announced, also said the deal with CBS calls for a “non-disparaging” agreement that forbids the parties from speaking negatively about each other.

The settlement and possible comeback come more than four months after Imus created an uproar over his racist and sexist comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team.

Just before his dismissal, Imus signed a five-year, $40 million contract to continue his nationally syndicated radio program, based at New York’s WFAN-AM, which is owned by CBS Radio and a part of CBS Corp. Garbus, the famed First Amendment lawyer, said in May that Imus planned to sue CBS for $120 million in unpaid salary and damages.

Imus, 67, was dismissed April 12 after describing the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos” on his show, also simulcast on MSNBC.

Garbus had cited a contract clause in which CBS acknowledged that Imus’ services were “unique, extraordinary, irreverent, intellectual, topical, controversial.”