LOS ANGELES:
SANTA ANA, Calif:
A selfdescribed family man with a distinctive back tattoo felt humiliated after Cardi B allegedly misused his likeness for her suggestive mixtape cover art, his lawyer said during opening arguments Tuesday.
Kevin Michael Brophy is suing the Grammy-winning musician in a $5 million copyrightinfringement lawsuit in federal court in Southern California. His attorneys say Brophy’s life was disrupted and he suffered distress because of the 2016 artwork.
Brophy’s lawyer A. Barry Cappello said photo-editing software was use to put the back tattoo, which has appeared in tattoo magazines, onto the male model used in the mixtape cover. The image shows a tattooed man from behind with his head between the rapper’s legs. The man’s face cannot be seen.
Cardi B, who is expected to testify during the trial, is fighting the allegations and said an artist used only a “small portion” of the tattoos without her knowledge. She had previously said the cover art - created by Timm Gooden
- was transformative fair use of Brophy’s likeness.
“Their life has been disrupted,” Cappello told the jury as Cardi B, whose real name is Belcalis Almanzar, watched from the defense table. He said the image disturbed Brophy along with his wife, Lindsay Michelle Brophy, who he says initially questioned her husband if it was him in the cover art. The couple has two young children.
Brody has said he once considered his back tattoo featuring a tiger battling a serpent to be a “Michelangelo piece”.
Defense filings have pointed out that the model who posed for the photos was Black, while Brophy is white.
Cardi B’s lawyer Peter Anderson said Brophy and the mixtape image are unrelated. He said the model did not have tattoos on his neck, which Brophy does. (AP)
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A prosecutor on Tuesday described rape allegations by three women against “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson from two decades ago that contained some of the same disturbing elements.
Two women became woozy or passed out after a couple drinks and were tossed in his hot tub, Deputy District Attorney Reinhold Mueller said in his opening statement in Masterson’s trial.
Masterson’s lawyer said the reason the allegations had so much in common is that the alleged victims violated a detective’s warning not to speak with each other and had
Masterson