Lawsuit of the Day

Lawsuit of the Day: Former Model Doesn't Want to be Lusted After

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A former swimsuit model is offended at the suggestion that men would use her photograph as masturbatory material. And now she’s filing a $10 million lawsuit against NBC Universal for “great humiliation, embarrassment, emotional distress, shame, mortification and injury to her reputation and career” because an old photo of her was used as such fodder in the movie Couple’s Retreat.
From the New York Post:

Irina Krupnik “only learned of defendants’ lascivious use of her photo in the film” after it was released in theaters — and was horrified to discover it was being used as a “masturbatory prop” for a character played by Jon Favreau, the [now] makeup artist says in papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.

What do swimsuit models think men do with their ads?
We have put her photo after the jump. Look, but do not get any ideas…


We didn’t see the film but the complaint describes the scene in some detail:

The movie is a comedy about four couples trying to work out their differences at a resort in Bora Bora. In one scene, Krupnik’s picture is featured in a fictitious brochure that Favreau’s “overweight, unhappily married male character” uses “to masturbate while his wife is in the washroom,” the suit says.
Krupnik was not amused to find herself being used for Favreau’s “much older, desiccated” character to “pleasure himself,” the suit says, noting that the scene “would be a crime if Mr. Favreau attempted it on a New York City subway.”

So if Vince Vaughn had been the one getting dirty with her photo, that might have been okay?
Despite the fact that Krupnik signed a general release at the time the photo was taken, she claims she never expected it to be used in this “quasi-pornographic context.”
Luckily for Krupnik’s reputation, the movie was so bad that it did not remain in theaters for long.
Woman sues over unwitting appearance in ‘Couples Retreat’ [New York Post]
Former model Irina Krupnik sues makers of ‘Couples Retreat’ for using sexy photo in tawdry scene [New York Daily News]

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