Lindsay Lohan Expands Her Lawsuit Against Grand Theft Auto 5’s Makers
Everyone's favorite, freckled ball of controversy, Lindsay Lohan, has broken out the big guns in her lawsuit against Take-Two Interactive with a new, 67-page-long complaint, objecting to a Grand Theft Auto V character she believes was wrongfully made in her likeness without her permission.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the troubled Lindsay Lohan is getting mighty serious with the lawsuit she filed against Take-Two Interactive, the publishers of Grand Theft Auto V. This past July, we reported that Lohan filed a 10-page complaint against the publisher that wasn't all too convincing in terms of proving a viable case against Take-Two -- the filed complaint did not have much evidence and even misspelled Lohan's name in it.
Earlier this week, Lohan's lawyers filed a new complaint that is 67-pages-long. This new complaint openly discusses "common interest among all celebrities, actors, singers, and athletes … to protect their likeness and personas from misappropriation by unscrupulous merchandisers" in its introductory pages.
It looks like Lohan's legal team is going for the broad swing in terms of questioning whether or not movies, games and TV shows should be able to parody and farce.
Lindsay Lohan is, of course, no stranger to controversy or being painted in a negative light -- she has gone from being one of Disney's golden girls to being in stuck in a revolving door of drugs, alcohol, court appearances, rehab and diminishing roles in B-movies. In the past, Lohan lost a lawsuit filed against Pitbull for the rapper mentioning her name in his song, "Give Me Everything." She also sued E-Trade over a commercial that featured a "milkaholic" baby named Lindsay, which was settled out of court.
Lohan's lawsuit objects to the GTA V character, Lacey Jonas, who is in a minor side mission where either Franklin, Trevor or Michael picks her up to avoid the paparazzi. Take-Two originally responded to the lawsuit by saying, "her claim is so legally meritless that it lacks any good-faith basis and can only have been filed for publicity purposes."
Lohan's legal team beefed up the original complaint with over 45 new pages of evidence, which mainly focuses on that Kate Upton-looking model in the red bikini we kept seeing for the game's advertisements. The complaint claims that the publisher purposely "used a look-a-like model to evoke the persona and image" of an old picture of her taken in 2007. She claims that Take-Two modified her look to make the image fit on the actual game disc. The lawsuit now includes all of the various types of merchandise and advertisements that featured the bikini-clad blonde, claiming it was all done to milk Lohan's image.
More importantly, Lohan's lawsuit tries to counter the notion that a video game represents a transformative fair use, which invokes the First Amendment's protection of free speech.
"The Defendants were in the business of selling games as opposed to artists displaying artwork in galleries for profit where unauthorized images or portraits of individuals were reproduced in limited editions as opposed to the mass production for commercial promotion and financial gain."
Lohan's lawsuit is happening at the same time as former Panama dictator Manuel Noriega is trying to sue Activision Blizzard over his appearance in Call of Duty: Black Ops II. For the sake of free speech and parody, we honestly hope Noriega and Lohan both lose their cases. In all honesty, the picture looks more like Kate Upton than anything. The Lacey Jonas character you actually encounter in the game looks nothing like Lohan.