Amended Complaint From Lindsay Lohan Against Take Two: Now With Five Times More Paper!
from the publicity-wrongs dept
When we last left the saga of Lindsay Lohan's 10 page complaint against Take 2 Interactive over a publicly-fornicating, drunk-driving character in Grand Theft Auto 5 that she insisted was her own spitting image, Take 2 was asking for the whole thing to be dismissed because the character is obviously not a reproduction of Lohan at all, but a parody take on celebrity fame. In addition to that, Take 2 also mentioned that the statute of limitations may have expired on the issue, since it had been well over a year since the side-mission featuring the alleged-Lohan-doppelganger had been announced and publicized.
Well, Lohan's legal team has responded with...paper. Lots more of it, actually. Her amended complaint comes in at a whopping sixty-seven pages and it's chock-filled with images of Lohan in what she's insisting proves that Take 2 used her image as a basis for Lacey Jonas.
Lohan's lawyers have now reacted to this gambit by on Wednesday stuffing 45 pages of pictured exhibits into an amended complaint, including a photograph of the game CD, one of which features a blonde, red bikini-clad woman holding up the peace sign. According to the amended complaint, the game publisher "used a look-a-like model to evoke the persona and image" of Lohan by imitating a photograph that was once taken of her in 2007. On some of the game discs, the blonde character that Lohan asserts is her doppelganger is shown in what the lawsuit calls "an arrest pose known as the 'Stop and Frisk.'"A female celebrity holding up a peace sign? Clearly nobody besides Lindsay Lohan has ever been photographed doing that.
Lindsay looks different these days.
Anyway, her legal team is trying to get around New York's publicity rights laws, which are limited to the realm of advertising, by including all kinds of images of the Lacey Jonas character that Take 2 put on t-shirts and coffee mugs. Except, of course, that none of that was in the original complaint and the character in question still isn't a direct reproduction of Lindsay Lohan. It's a composite parody on L.A. female celebrities in general and it's protected speech due to its nature.
As for how the Lohan legal team is attempting to get around the statute of limitations...whoo boy.
Lohan has reacted to this defense by talking about the "republication" of her image upon the release of the actual videogame later that year. According to the amended lawsuit, Take-Two modified her image to fit on the game disk. Lohan now claims that this "modification" should satisfy the exception to the one-year statute of limitation.It's the same image sized to fit onto a DVD disc...and that somehow excuses her not taking action for over year because why exactly? In the end, hopefully the court will see this legal action for what it is: a misunderstanding of parody and the first amendment coupled with a plea for attention.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: grand theft auto 5, gta 5, lindsay lohan, new york, publicity rights
Companies: take 2 interactive
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in thread ]
so
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Personally, I find the resemblance to be pretty superficial.
I've heard of the game; until this lawsuit, I'd never heard of HER.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The problem of course is that aside from both the cover girl and Lohan being blonde, the likeness just isn't there. They even included a google image search screenshot for the search criteria "lindsay lohan GTA 5," but this is after it's been widely reported that Lohan was suing over it, so the search results reflect her claims being keyword-associated after the fact. It doesn't actually indicate that anyone thinks the cover girl looks like Lohan.
And including her name in the search is what causes the search results to include images of her so much. If you just do a google image search for "gta v cover girl," you'll find a bunch of images that indicate that people seem to think that the cover girl looks like Kate Upton or Yvonne Strahovski. If I had to cast a celebrity to match just the face, I'd go with Malin Akerman... who looks nothing like Lohan.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
She's thrashing around...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I hope she loses.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Let me get this straight..
Way to set the bar high.
[ link to this | view in thread ]