Legal threat to Underbelly: Badness

It just wouldn’t be Underbelly without a legal threat hanging over its head.

The Sunday Herald Sun reports Nine is facing a legal suit over Underbelly: Badness.

Lawyers for Matthew Robert Lawton, 45, wrote to the network on July 5 asking it to “refrain from releasing the series” until Lawton’s appeal was complete.

In April, he was sentenced to a minimum jail term of 15 years in the NSW Supreme Court after he was convicted of murdering Falconer, a former bikie.

Nine’s lawyers waited until 72 hours before the airing of the first episode before they refuted the threat in writing.

Anthony Perish was sentenced to at least 18 years’ jail for the murder. His brother, Andrew, was given a non-parole sentence of nine years for conspiring to murder Falconer.