Lawyers say a settlement has been reached to allow Joe Patten, known as the "Phantom of the Fox," to live out the rest of his days in his Fox Theatre apartment.

When the Fox in Atlanta was threatened with demolition in the 1970s, Patten led efforts to save it.

The 83-year-old has lived in the apartment beneath the historic theater's dome since 1979, when he signed a lifelong lease.

Last year, trustees of the nonprofit Atlanta Landmarks, which runs the Fox, voted to terminate the lease and Patten's lawyer sued to stop it.

A statement from both sides Tuesday said Patten can continue to live in the apartment under terms of the confidential agreement.

When his ouster became known, many around Atlanta rallied and caused bad publicity for the Fox.

A white suburban woman who staged a hoax kidnapping of her and her daughter and blamed it on two black men before flying to Disney World admitted Tuesday that she fled after swindling a huge sum of money from her ex-boss and an elderly relative.

Bonnie Sweeten told a 911 operator in 2009 that the men had kidnapped her and her 9-year-old daughter and stuffed them in the trunk of a Cadillac. Mother and child surfaced days later at a Disney hotel in Orlando, Fla.

Sweeten, a 40-year-old paralegal from Feasterville, just outside Philadelphia, served a year in prison for the false 911 call. She now faces a likely six to eight years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines for the fraud scheme, which prosecutors pegged at more than $1 million. She diverted more than $700,000 from client settlements and other funds at her law firm and another $280,000 from the relative's Vanguard investment account, prosecutors said.

Sweeten, a PTA mom, used the money to fund a lifestyle beyond the means of her and her second husband, a self-employed landscaper. They lived in a $425,000 house, spent thousands of dollars on infertility treatments and enjoyed a gym membership, trips, restaurant meals and other niceties.

Mounting a large-scale bias claim against a huge company will be more difficult in light of a Supreme Court decision that found no convincing proof of discrimination on which to allow a class action against retail giant Wal-Mart on behalf of as many as 1.6 million women.

All the justices agreed in the decision released Monday that the case couldn't proceed as a class action in its current form, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. By a 5-4 vote along ideological lines, the court also said there were too many women in too many jobs at Wal-Mart to wrap into one lawsuit.

While individuals could still pursue their own cases, they would continue with the prospect of costly legal fees and long time frames and ultimately lack the power that would have accompanied the largest sex-discrimination lawsuit in U.S. history.

Two of the named plaintiffs, Christine Kwapnoski and Betty Dukes, vowed to continue their fight, even as they expressed disappointment about the ruling.

"We still are determined to go forward to present our case in court. We believe we will prevail there," said Dukes, a greeter at the Wal-Mart in Pittsburg, Calif.