Beat it!
A $10 million lawsuit by a woman who was upset that her picture was used as a “masturbatory prop” in a hit Vince Vaughn movie has reached an abrupt climax, with a judge throwing the case out of court.
Irina Krupnik said she suffered “great humiliation, embarrassment, emotional distress, shame, mortification and injury to her reputation and career” when a character in the movie “Couples Retreat” last year was shown preparing to pleasure himself to a picture of her in a bikini.
The photo hadn’t been digitally manipulated. Krupnik admitted that she posed for the picture in a modeling shoot almost a decade ago but never imagined it would be used in a “quasipornographic context,” her lawsuit said.
“Ms. Krupnik, in the photograph of her posed alone on a beach in a swimsuit, simply did not consent to her likeness being fondled by a man preparing to masturbate in a scene in a major studio film released around the world,” her court filings said.
Lawyers for the movies’ makers, NBC Universal, said the now successful makeup stylist protested too much.
They noted she’d posed nude for a magazine in the past and has been a staple on the Bikini.com Web site for the past decade, ranked as one of its “supermodels.”
“She’s the ravishing Russian that’s causing a revolution!” says the site, which features dozens of steamy pictures of the woman “who wants to be your comrade” under the name “Irene Krupnik.”
Krupnik’s lawyer, Tom Mullaney, said other pictures his client may have posed for had nothing to do with how the innocent picture of her was used in “Couples Retreat.”
The judge presiding over the case, O. Peter Sherwood, agreed — but he found that the waiver Krupnik signed at the time of the 2001 Bikini.com shoot did.
He noted that Krupnik was paid $1500 for the shoot and signed a release “that not only permits the use of her image for any and all purposes . . . but expressly waives any claims for misappropriation of the right of privacy or publicity and defamation.”
Therefore, he ruled, there was no problem with how the moviemakers, who’d bought the rights to use the picture for $500, featured it in the film.
Mullaney said his client was “disappointed” by the ruling and was weighing an appeal.