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.
Filed Under: grand theft auto 5, gta 5, lindsay lohan, new york, publicity rights
Companies: take 2 interactive
Comments on “Amended Complaint From Lindsay Lohan Against Take Two: Now With Five Times More Paper!”
If people hadn’t associated the character with Lohan before, they sure as hell will now. Good work there!
so
What they are saying is just because Lindsay Lohan has turned herself into a parody of celebrity culture doesn’t mean she can sue anyone else that tries to parody it?
Next, she’ll sue all young women who are relatively slender, have longish blonde hair, wear red a bikini and the audacity to make a peace sign while holding a cell phone.
Personally, I find the resemblance to be pretty superficial.
I’ve heard of the game; until this lawsuit, I’d never heard of HER.
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I’ve heard of Lohan, but I have no idea what she looks like. But guess what’s linked in my brain now.
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Which, ironically enough, means it’s dead-on.
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If she does, she can start with the actual model for the character. She is actress Shelby Welinder and if you spend a couple of minutes searching you can find pics of her payment invoice from Rockstar.
Did she copyright and trademark sleazy1/
I love the inclusion of the article from Sarah Miller in the filing. It basically insults Lohan’s character and then details exactly what her lawyers should do by focusing on the red bikini cover pic as if it’s the smoking gun. And it goes on to make terribly vague claims as to why it’s supposedly obvious that Take-Two used Lohan as a basis for the character.
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.
Pretty sure the pick is of Miley Cyrus and not Lohan.
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That was the point, read the article.
She's thrashing around...
Attempting to remain relevant. Clearly she doesn’t realize that any relevance she may once have had is long gone, and this doesn’t help. She COULD try working to clean up her image, and playing some meaningful roles, but who wants the risk of associating their name with her these days?
So, Lindsay Lohan decided to kick up a fuss about a fictional character which looks absolutely nothing like her (in fact, it looks like Frau Hilda from Hogan’s Heroes) because she’s quite possibly going bankrupt and in order to satisfy her own greed and narcissism.
I hope she loses.
Is she going to sue all drug-addled junkie fame whores who’ll probably be dead within 2years due to an overdose?
Let me get this straight..
Lindsay is claiming copyright on being a publicly fornicating drunk driving decadent?
Way to set the bar high.