Alex Murdaugh’s surviving son, Buster Murdaugh, was granted a “victory” this week when a federal judge decided to allow his defamation suit against CNN parent company Warner Bros. to proceed, former South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon told Fox News Digital.

Court documents filed in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina on June 9 detail Judge Richard Mark Gergel’s order denying Warner Bros’ and Blackfin Inc.’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which alleges that the media conglomerates “insinuated and implied” in their respective Murdaugh documentary that Buster, now 28, “had murdered a 19-year-old Hampton County man named Stephen Smith.”

Smith — Buster’s former classmate — was found dead on a rural road in Hampton County, where the Murdaugh family is from, in the summer of 2015. 

An autopsy later determined that he had been fatally struck by a vehicle in a hit-and-run while he was walking along the run after running out of gas.

The retired solicitor, who had served as the region’s top prosecutor before retiring in 2005, is the late father of Alex Murdaugh.

He allegedly told Smith’s mother he was willing to work pro bono as a liaison between the family and investigators but soon stopped returning their calls, the letter says. An attorney for the Smith family did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Buster issued a statement in 2023 through his attorney denying any role in Smith’s death: “These baseless rumors of my involvement in Stephen’s death are false,” he said. “My heart goes out to the Smith family.” 

Fox News Digital reached out to Buster’s attorneys for comment regarding Gergel’s order this week.