It isn’t the first and probably won’t be the last time when Lindsay Lohan (LiLo) has found herself in a lawsuit, the only difference being that she’s the one suing this time.
LiLo shot to fame after starring in movies like The Parent Trap and Mean Girls, but off-late she has found herself more in lawsuits and rehabs rather than movie studios. She has recently brought up a lawsuit against Take-Two and its subsidiary, Rockstar Games, and surprisingly she appears to be heading towards a victory, at least in the early stages this time round, despite her earlier court track record.
The case was filed by LiLo back in the year 2014 when she claimed that the GTA V‘s character ‘Lacey Jonas’ had an uncanny resemblance and carried an ‘unequivocal’ reference to her which violated her rights as guaranteed under New York Civil Rights Law.
LiLo claims that the game has references to her “star turn” in the movie Mean Girls and the hotel West Hollywood where the star once lived. She also claims that one of her 2007 photographs has been used by the merchandise publisher which has used this photograph for various products like T-shirts, billboards, mugs, posters, websites, bus ads, etc.
Take-Two Interactive has responded to these allegations by saying that both Lindsay and Lacey are blonde young women, but this is all; the comparison ends here. They claimed that the LiLo’s claims are ‘legally meritless’ and she’s only doing this for ‘publicity purposes’. Here is the concerned photograph:
The publishers also went on to say that the merchandise in question which is using the image is not an official GTA V product although this shouldn’t make a difference because of New York publicity rights.
“It still wouldn’t be susceptible to Lohan’s lawsuit, because the New York publicity rights statute affords the same protection to merchandise and advertising of art as to the art itself, according to case law the motion cites.”
The Hollywood Reporter has noted that Judge Joan Kennedy of the New York Supreme Court on Friday wrote that she would be making all interferences in the favour of Lindsay for the time being. This according to THR is because of:
At this stage, [she] can’t rely upon defendants’ documents aiming to show the images in question don’t show Lohan and ruled that the actress’ statements in her pleading had sufficiently alleged causes of action to merit a denial of the dismissal motion.
Judge Kennedy also rejected the claim of Take-Two that the lawsuit was brought too late. She wrote in this respect:
Defendants have not been able to prove, at this juncture of the litigation, that the republication exception to the one year statute of limitations is not applicable to this case because the intended audiences were the same as those of the original publication and the images consistently remained the same.
Take-Two hasn’t made any comments yet, but actor Ned Luke who played the character of Michael de Santa in the game took to Twitter to express his views. Here is the tweet:
It’s a stretch but MAYBE there’s a resemblance. #LindsayIsNuts https://t.co/x3IQppzXSK pic.twitter.com/GfUi5gMlMf
— Ned Luke (@ned_luke) 14 March 2016
The GTA V was released back in 2013 and till now it has sold over 60 million copies and as of now, it is the best-selling game in the U.S. Do let us know what you think about this lawsuit.