This isn’t Apple related, but is too ridiculous to pass up. Everyone’s favorite burned out actress, Lindsay “I was kind of cute in that one movie” Lohan, is suing E-trade claiming that one of its famed ‘talking baby’ commercials disparages her reputation because one of the babies references a “milkaholic” named Lindsay.
“They used the name Lindsay,” Lohan’s lawyer Stephanie Ovadia said. “They’re using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn’t they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody’s talking about it and saying it’s Lindsay Lohan.”
Lohan is asking for $100 million in damages for alleged pain and suffering.
What can we take away from all of this? Well, just off the top of my head, we can gather that Lindsay Lohan is a washed up movie star whose career peaked with “Mean Girls.” Never living up to her potential, she embarked on a drug and alcohol ridden path towards self-destruction all before the age of 21. Having learned nothing from her struggles with addiction, Lohan still thinks the world revolves around her and naturally assumes that any mention of the name ‘Lindsay” in pop culture is in reference to her.
And one more thing, she’s anything but attractive. Now let’s all toast to frivolous lawsuits!
March 10th, 2010 at 2:27 pm
It seems to me that Ms. Lohan has only two basis for her suit. The first is defamation, specifically libel. However, defamation requires that one have a sufficiently good reputation so that is capable of suffering injury from disparagement. One could argue, inter alia, in defense that Ms. Lohan’s reputation is so bad that it is nearly impossible to disparage it. Short of accusing her bestiality or child molestation, could one do or say anything that would damage Ms. Lohan’s reputation? And, of course, Ms. Lohan will have a very difficult time showing that a reasonable person would have inferred that E-Trade commercial was referring to her so that it disparaged her.
And without being able to reasonably infer that the ad was referring to her, Ms. Lohan will not be able to sustain the second basis for her suit: to claim that E-Trade misused her likeness to promote her products without her permission. This suit has the further problem that Ms. Lohan’s name and/or likeness isn’t worth very much, so, even if a court were to reach the incredible conclusion that the E-Trade as was indeed using her likeness, the damage would be very small.
In my view, if Ms. Lohan’s suit isn’t frivolous, it is as close as most lawyer would dare get to be sanctioned for filing a frivolous lawsuit, that is, a lawsuit that fails to have a basis in law and fact.