There’s a new meaning for the word paywall from the News Corp empire of Rupert Murdoch. It’s normally defined as a way of charging users to access websites, especially news and current affairs websites. Now it’s a way of shutting down what looks like to have been an emerging PR and business debacle in an American court.

Over the weekend News Corp rushed out a short statement, which was telling for what it did say, and even more telling for what it didn’t.

After years of denying and asserting that it would win this long-running case brought by Valassis Communications, News shut it down, at a cost of more than half a billion dollars. The statement was released yesterday morning, Sydney time, obviously too late for the News Ltd outlets in Australia to record today.

“It has become evident to our legal advisers from pre-trial proceedings over the past couple of weeks that significant risks were developing in presenting this case to a jury,” said News Corporation deputy-chairman, president and chief operating officer Chase Carey. “That, coupled with concerns over the venue, led us to believe it was in the best interests of the company and its stockholders to agree to a settlement.”

The upshot of this is the payment of $US500 million ($A566 million) by News Corp to Valassis.

According to some US reports, problems emerged last week for News Corp in pre-trial argument (there’s a veil of secrecy over these arguments) ahead of the court case that was due to start Tuesday night, our time.

That’s when News Corp is also due to report its second quarter and interim results for the period ending December 31, 2009.

Some of the reports claimed that the pre-trial decisions by the judge went badly for News, others suggested that the selection of a trial jury was a major factor.

So News settled with the complaint by paying $US500 million, to settle all claims, including an earlier $US300 million judgement for Valassis that was under appeal by News.

News had been sued in the US Federal courts by Valassis Communications alleging engaging in anti-competitive actions that hurt Valassis.

Valassis had already won the $US300 million in a Michigan circuit court last July (which News was appealing) and has a case pending in a state court case in California.

Now News has got the chequebook out and signed up for half a billion dollars, enough to make Valassis go away.

Valassis had accused the marketing arm of News Corp, News America Marketing, of predatory pricing and coercive long-term contracts with packaged goods companies and supermarkets.

The pre-trial litigation had been conducted under a shroud of secrecy imposed by a judge. Therefore there’s been very little to emerge into the public arena to support the claims, or rebut them.

But judging from Carey’s comments in the statement of “significant risks developing” in the case, the arguments must have gone very, very badly for News.

With Valassis after $US900 million in the case that was due to start tomorrow night, it could have been up for considerably more.

The Valassis case was an anti-trust suit, and the actual damages, had they been awarded, could have been triple the $US900 million claimed.

Given that Valssis already had a favourable decision from last year, US reports suggest that News, fearful of again losing, decided that half a billion was much cheaper than a potential $US2.7 billion to make the whole saga go away.

As a telling sign of News’ complete surrender, News America Marketing will enter into a 10-year shared-mail distribution agreement with Valassis. And in addition, the judge will issue a permanent injunction related to certain business practices at issue in the lawsuits. Those relate to News America Marketing.