Seth Williams Settles Twitter Photo Case

Said photographer who took pic was trying to shake him down.

District Attorney Seth Williams has settled a case in which he was accused of using a Philly photographer’s picture of the city skyline on his Twitter account — without the photographer’s permission.

The Daily News’s Chris Brennan reports Williams saw himself as the victim in the affair after being confronted by the photographer, R. Bradley Maule of PhillySkyline.comduring a 2013 primary Election Day lunch at the Famous 4th Street Deli. Williams said in a deposition that Maule was trying to “shake me down over some silly picture.”

“Unfortunately, there’s a lot of human nature that there are people who prey on elected officials, people that they think are trying to do good,” Williams explained in the deposition.

Instead, Williams went on, Maule could probably benefit from telling people the district attorney was using his picture.

The picture was placed on Williams’ account by an employee of his office, who found it using a Google search for “Philadelphia skyline.”

The case — in which Maule accused Williams of theft of intellectual property — was scheduled for trial Thursday in federal court. Instead, both sides told Brennan, the case was settled out-of-court instead. None of the settlement’s details were publicly reported.

Maule’s orginal suit:

Settlement: