Days before a trial was set to begin, a prominent Tuscaloosa businessman settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed against him in the death of a University of Alabama student.

Michael and Cindy Rondini, parents of Megan Rondini, sued T.J. Bunn Jr. in 2017, alleging he contributed to their daughter’s suicide eight months after she reported she was raped by Bunn in July 2015.

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The lawsuit was set to go before a federal jury on Sept. 20, but both parties agreed to a settlement in court-ordered mediation on Sept. 17, according to court filings. Details of the settlement are not publicly available.

A lawyer for Michael Rondini declined to comment on Friday. Bunn’s attorney has not yet returned request for comment.

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Bunn has denied the allegations, and a Tuscaloosa grand jury declined to indict him on criminal charges at the conclusion of the rape investigation. The Rondinis initially sued the University of Alabama and law enforcement, alleging a university therapist failed to properly support Megan Rondini. The university settled its portion of the lawsuit in 2018, agreeing to put $450,000 toward a namesake scholarship and a new program to care for victims of sexual assault.

Megan Rondini met Bunn and a friend at the Innisfree bar in July 2015. The Rondini family alleged in their lawsuit that she became either intoxicated or drugged and was driven by Bunn to his home, where they say he raped her.

“Megan told investigators that she repeatedly informed defendant Bunn that she did not want to have sex with him and that she needed to rejoin her friends,” the lawsuit stated.

Shortly after, Megan Rondini called her parents, went to the local hospital for treatment and filed a police report. The Rondini family alleged local law enforcement, swayed by the influential Bunn family, botched the investigation, which Tuscaloosa authorities have denied.

Megan Rondini ultimately withdrew from UA in the fall of 2015 as she struggled with trauma from the alleged rape, “fearful that she would encounter defendant Bunn on campus, that he was following her, and would attack her again or retaliate against her for reporting the rape.”

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Returning home to Texas, she sought medical, psychological and psychiatric treatment before she ultimately died by suicide in February 2016.

Bunn has maintained the sexual encounter between the two was consensual, and his attorneys initially attempted to block the lawsuit by claiming the wrongful death suit could not proceed because of Megan Rondini’s suicide.

But the Alabama Supreme Court disagreed in a May ruling, as a federal judge found the Rondinis had “sufficient evidence” for a jury to conclude that Bunn’s actions led to their daughter’s suicide, clearing the way for the lawsuit to head to trial.

In June, Michael Rondini told UA student newspaper The Crimson White that he plans to continue advocating for victims in the future, focusing on repairing the systems that can complicate rape prosecution cases, such as backlogs of rape kits. Cindy Rondini died of cancer in 2019.

“At this point, it’s about helping others,” Michael Rondini said. “There’s nothing I could do to bring Megan back, but the things that Megan and my wife Cindy wanted were for other women that claimed sexual assault not to have to go through what we went through.”

The Associated Press and former Tuscaloosa News reporter Stephanie Taylor contributed to this report. Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Melissa Brown at 334-240-0132 or [email protected].

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