Game on, Lindsay!
‘Video’ suit to top court
New York’s highest court will soon be debating actress Lindsay Lohan’s red string bikini and mob rat Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano.
The Court of Appeals has chosen lowbrow celebrities — Lohan and Gravano’s daughter, the “Mob Wives” star Karen Gravano — to argue potentially precedent-setting First Amendment cases against the maker of popular video-game franchise “Grand Theft Auto.”
Both Lohan’s and Gravano’s lawsuits against the gaming company were tossed by a mid-level appeals court in September.
The Manhattan Appellate Division found in a unanimous rul- ing that Grand Theft Auto’s First Amendment rights trumped the celebrities’ claims that their images had been used without their permission.
On Thursday, the Court of Appeals granted the women the right to appeal, a right awarded to a small percentage of applicants.
Oral arguments have not been scheduled.
Lohan and Gravano sued the game’s parent company, Take Two Interactive, in 2014 for using their likenesses for characters in Grand Theft Auto.
Lohan’s suit said a look-alike character named Lacey Jonas sported Lindsay’s bikini, hairstyle, accessories and even her signature peacesign pose.
Gravano said the narrative of her video-game avatar, Andrea Bottino, paralleled her own life story about a mob daughter who moves to a string of safe houses after her father starts cooperating with the government.
But the Appellate Division ruled that the characters were merely “representations” of the real-life celebrities, not carbon copies. The panel said that made the games works of fiction and satire that are protected under the First Amendment.
“From the outset, Ms. Gravano and I have been confident in her claim,” said her attorney, Thomas Farinella.
He speculated that New York’s high court is taking the case because it deals with an important constitutional issue on which different jurisdictions throughout the state are divided.
Lohan’s lawyer, Robert Pritchard, said the gaming company “deliberately or recklessly used digital drawings . . . recognizable as Lindsay Lohan on billboard advertising and on packaging materials solely to improperly advertise their video game ‘Grand Theft Auto V.’ ”