Playboy Playmates Sue Strip Club for Using Their Images
By Jennifer E. RothmanOctober 21, 2015
Successful Playboy models, Tiffany Selby, Irina Voronina, and Joanna Krupa, have sued a New York strip club, Café Royale, for using their images to promote the venue. The models complaint includes claims for right of publicity violations (under New York Civil Rights Law §§ 50-51), false endorsement under the Lanham Act (§ 43), deceptive trade practices (under New York General Bus. Law § 349), and defamation. Unsurprisingly for a strip club, some of the altered images are sexually suggestive and indicate nudity. Looks like promising claims as to false endorsement and right of publicity. Somewhat less convincing is the defamation claim from adult-oriented models that association with the strip club would subject them to “hatred, shame, . . .ridicule, aversion, ostracism, degradation . . . and/or could induce an evil opinion of Plaintiffs in the minds of right-thinking persons, and/or could deprive each Plaintiff of confidence and friendly intercourse in society.” Perhaps the complaint itself defames adult entertainers.
Complaint, Selby v. 109 Restaurant Corp. (E.D.N.Y., Filed Oct. 13, 2015)