MASKLESS WOMAN SUES OVER GOFUNDME PAGE

Customer names man who created campaign for Starbucks barista in suit

Last year, a fundraising campaign made national news.

It started when a San Diego Starbucks barista refused to serve a maskless customer. She snapped a photo of him and posted it on Facebook, saying “next time, I will wait for the cops and bring a medical exemption.”

Her post went viral and inspired an Orange County man to create a GoFundMe campaign. Not for the customer, but for the barista.

The campaign, he wrote, was for the barista’s “honorable effort standing his ground when faced with a Karen in the wild.” The story made headlines. His call for tips raised $100,000 for the worker.

Now the customer, Amber Gilles, is suing the creator of the GoFundMe campaign, Matt Cowan. Allegations in her complaint, filed last week in San Diego Superior Court, include misappropriation of her name and likeness, and invading privacy in a false light.

According to Gilles’ filing, she has lost online referrals as a yoga instructor and suffered “public scorn.” She has also received hate mail and death threats.

Cowan, reached Wednesday, said he is in talks with attorneys. “Personally, I think that this is a baseless lawsuit, and that Amber is seeking to profit off the good deed that I did in arranging the fundraiser for Lenin (Gutierrez, the barista) in June of last year,” he said.

The suit does not specify an amount, but rather seeks compensatory and punitive damages, as well as $750 for violation of a California code barring use of a person’s likeness for certain uses without con