Court refuses to dismiss Lindsay Lohan’s GTA image rights claim
Actor Lindsay Lohan has won the first round of her image rights dispute with the makers of the “Grand Theft Auto” (GTA) video games after a US court ruled that questions need answering before the lawsuit can be dismissed.
Take-Two Interactive, the publisher of the GTA games, had sought a dismissal of Lohan’s claim that the character Lacey Jonas, who appears in “Grand Theft Auto V”, is an unauthorised portrayal of the actor.
Jonas appears in one of the game’s missions where players have to help her escape from the paparazzi.
Lohan, citing sections 50 and 51 of the New York Civil Rights Law, claimed that the use of the character is a violation of her image rights.
The law prohibits the use of an individual’s name or image for trade purposes without obtaining consent.
Her complaint, filed on July 1, 2014 at the Supreme Court of the State of New York, alleged that her image was also used to promote the game in June 2013, three months before it was released.
Take-Two countered that the game is a work of art and therefore exempt from restrictions under civil rights law.
It added that Lohan’s complaint was time-barred because the lawsuit was filed more than a year after the first images of her alleged likeness were used. It asked the court dismiss the case before trial.
The publisher also called for sanctions against Lohan for her alleged misuse of the legal system.
Take-Two pointed to Lohan’s previous failed attempt to find that a lyric used in a song by musician Pitbull violated her publicity right as an example of the actor’s record of filing abusive litigation.
But Judge Joan Kenney kept the lawsuit alive after stating that the “factual dispute requires a determination by the trier of facts and said documents [Take-Two’s motion-to-dismiss] cannot, at this juncture, support an application to dismiss based on the self-serving statements that the images are not those of the plaintiff’s”.
Kenney added that a trial is needed to determine if Lohan’s complaint is time-barred.
“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,” she concluded.
