Katherine Heigl Drops Her Lawsuit Against Duane Reade

from the dropping-spree dept

Back in April, I wrote to inform you of the crazy-pants lawsuit filed by Katherine Heigl after Duane Reade, a drug store chain, tweeted out a photo of Heigl shopping at one of its stores. Under the auspices of publicity rights and the corollary idea that celebrities are simply better people with more legal privileges than the rest of us, Heigl wanted six-million dollars for the following tweet.

At the time, we noted that despite New York publicity rights laws being among the most tyrannical, it seemed strange for a lawsuit to be filed against a company simply for showing, you know, a thing that happened. While Heigl also claimed that this was a form of advertising, it's still just the accurate representation of something that occurred, which makes the whole advertising claim sort of silly.

Well, the lawsuit has now been voluntarily dropped with prejudice, along with news that Duane Reade has reached some sort of super-secret agreement with Heigl.

Papers to dismiss the lawsuit were submitted in New York federal court on Tuesday. The dismissal comes with prejudice, meaning that Heigl can't later sue again over Duane Reade's tweet and Facebook post. No terms were revealed in court papers, but Heigl's attorney provides at least some detail.

"Katherine Heigl and Duane Reade have worked out a mutually beneficial agreement," says Peter Haviland at Ballard Spahr. "Ms. Heigl has voluntarily dismissed her lawsuit, and Duane Reade has made a contribution to benefit the Jason Debus Heigl Foundation. The parties have agreed to keep the terms of the agreement confidential."

There's no way to be sure that Duane Reade didn't drop six million off at Heigl's charity, but I doubt it. Either way, it's sort of a shame to see the company run away from challenging the insanity of the claims in the original lawsuit. Publicity rights are beginning to result in ever-more ramped-up legal cases that anyone with a modicum of common sense will recognize as silly. It was a picture of Heigl shopping at a store. Somehow that resulted in the store having to settle and contribute to a celebrity's charity of choice? Come on now.

Filed Under: advertising, katherine heigl, publicity rights, settlement, tweets
Companies: duane reade

Should It Be Against The Law To Say That The Watch You're Selling Was Worn By Sandra Bullock?

from the factual-information... dept

A few years ago, we wrote about how Summit Entertainment, the producers of the Twilight movies had sued a fashion designer for accurately noting that one of her jackets had been worn by the character of "Bella" in the movies. Summit was using a publicity rights claim, which -- as we've discussed at length -- is a messy patchwork of state laws that were supposed to be about stopping companies from using a famous person's image to endorse a product if they hadn't agreed to it. While it seems to be clearly questionable to just take a random celebrity and insist they're endorsing a product when they have nothing to do with it, the laws get a lot murkier pretty quickly when dealing with accurately portraying factual information -- such as the fashion designer above.

More recently, we wrote about Katherine Heigl suing Duane Reade for posting a photograph of her walking out of a Duane Reade drugstore with a bag from the store. As we noted at the time, this (like the above situation) was an accurate representation of reality -- and claiming you can't accurately say that she shops at Duane Reade when she does raises all sorts of questions.

Apparently, there are more and more of these kinds of lawsuits popping up all over the place. Sandra Bullock has just settled a lawsuit with jewelry vendors who accurately pointed out that that they were selling a "a diamond-encrusted, white-band watch" that Bullock's character had warn in The Blind Side. Bullock's lawyers pointed out that she didn't want to endorse the watch, and that's fair, but accurately pointing out that her character wore the watch in a movie is not an endorsement. The article notes that there's a similar lawsuit (using the same lawyers) involving Halle Berry, suing ToyWatch for $2 million for associating her with merchandise that she wore in films as well.

You can understand why these people are upset -- they see a company "using" their name and likeness for commercial reasons, but at the same time, how can it be illegal to make an accurate statement? If the characters did wear that jewelry, then there should be no issue. Once again, we're left in this mess because these publicity rights laws are way too overreaching, leading to attempts to stifle perfectly accurate speech. And, of course, there's the reality of the situation, which is that most of these lawsuits are really just about trying to get paid.

Filed Under: accurate statements, free speech, halle berry, jewelry, katherine heigl, publicity rights, sandra bullock

Katherine Heigl Wants Six Mil-Do After Drugstore Tweets Picture Of Her Shopping There

from the publicity-bytes dept

When I become king of America, I can assure you that anything resembling publicity rights will be stricken from the legal record. We've seen entirely too much craziness recently over these laws that appear to create something of a VIP class citizenry. But while even the typical ownership culture insanity usually has an inkling of logic to it, Katherine Heigl suing a drugstore for six million dollars simply for tweeting a photo of the actress shopping there is a whole new level of protectionism.

It's a form of publicity rights gone insane yet again, after Duane Reade tweeted and Facebook-ed a paparazzi photo of Heigl walking out of a Duane Reade, carrying some bags of whatever she had just purchased.

Heigl, the star of the films "The Ugly Truth" and "Life as We Know It" and a best supporting actress Emmy winner for "Grey's Anatomy," filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in New York federal court. The complaint said she was photographed in March near a Duane Reade store in New York while filming a new television series. Duane Reade posted the photo on its Twitter and Facebook account with captions advertising the store without her approval, the complaint said.

The 15-page lawsuit cited a tweet that Heigl claimed Duane Reade posted last month. "Love a quick #DuaneReade run? Even @KatieHeigl can't resist shopping #NYC's favorite drugstore," it said.

Now, we should all know by now that New York's publicity rights laws resemble something a dictator might have put together, strictly governing what the little people can do with images of the important folks. That said, Duane Reade may have a pretty strong defense in that the photo was an accurate representation of a thing that happened. A picture is worth a thousand words, as they say, and all this picture is saying is "Heigl shopped at our drugstore and, hey, here's some photo evidence to prove it."

In fact, Duane Reade seems confident enough in its position that, as of writing this, the tweet is still up.

This is unlike some other publicity cases we've seen, such as when local grocery stores in Chicago congratulated Michael Jordan with an ad campaign, or the misinterpreted representation of celebrities in video games. This is a picture of something that happened represented over social media. At some point, it has to raise certain First Amendment issues about the broadness of various state publicity rights laws, when such laws can be used to prevent someone from accurately describing factual information. Yes, the point of publicity rights laws is to prevent companies from creating a false endorsement of a product, but is accurately describing the fact that someone shops at a store really a false endorsement?

On top of the publicity rights claim, Heigl claims that this is a form of "false advertising," but one could reasonably argue that (a) it's not false and (b) it's not advertising. The latter claim may be a little trickier, but where is the line between an advertisement, and some social media jockey at Duane Reade just tweeting out a photo. That line may become... very important to the outcome of this particular lawsuit.

But Heigl wants you to know she's not some kind of greedy monster:

The complaint said Heigl intends to donate all proceeds from the lawsuit to The Jason Debus Heigl Foundation, which was established in 2008 after her brother was killed in a car accident.

You're not fooling anyone. This is an ego-driven abuse of the legal system. Or, it would be, if publicity rights weren't opening the door to a whole new level of ownership culture insanity, where merely tweeting a picture of a thing that happened suddenly became actionable.

Filed Under: false advertising, first amendment, katherine heigl, publicity rights, tweets
Companies: duane reade