In July, Lindsay Lohan filed suit against Rockstar Games for a Grand Theft Auto V character that she says is based on her. Now the makers of Red Dead Redemption say that the movie star is only suing them to garner buzz.
An Associated Press article on the suit quotes court documents that have been made public, in which Rockstar and parent company Take-Two Interactive say that Lohan began the legal action “for publicity purposes.” The companies want the lawsuit dismissed and for Lohan to pay their legal fees, as well.
The GTA V character that Lohan claims is based on her is Lacey Jonas, a celebrity that’s the focus of a series of escort mission in the hit open world game. In the court documents, Rockstar says that Lohan’s likeness isn’t the basis for the character and that the only similarities are that in being a young, blonde woman.
We’ve reached out to Rockstar Games for comment and will update this post if they reply.
Picture: Getty Images
Comments
30 responses to “GTA Creators: Lindsay Lohan Is Suing Us ‘For Publicity Purposes’”
Of course it is. Lohan will take any publicity she can get. Any publicity is good publicity, after all.
I hate to break it to Rockstar, but the general gaming community already knew that. In fact, their responding to her is basically playing into her hands – which is one of the worst places to be…
They’re being sued. They have to respond.
True. But I think by now any court would see her name on the docket, understand why the other side didn’t show, and just throw said case out as it’s a waste of the courts time.
Umm… no. The courts are meant to be impartial. I guess you’ve never heard the saying “justice is blind”.
Also, they need to justify their responses otherwise LiHo’s lawyers will come down on them.
Courts are meant to be impartial, but history has shown otherwise.
And I have heard the expression, justice is blind. I’ve also heard the expression “The Law is an Ass”. It was true back when Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist and is still true now.
If they didn’t show or file an adequate defence, Lohan could apply to have a default judgement rendered against Rockstar and they could automatically loose. Unless you want to loose you can’t really ignore a claim.
Except that’s not how it works. A bench warrant may be issued if the defendant doesn’t appear.
What’s more, because failure to appear for a court date is a crime in and of itself, the court may find you guilty of the offense—even if your original charges are dismissed or you are found not guilty. As a result, it is important have legal counsel if you were recently charged with failure to appear in court.
I’m not sure if that’s how it is in the US, but being charged for failure to appear here would be if it was an indictable offence and you were on bail, a failure to appear in civil proceedings mostly just results loosing because of either a default judgement or the judge having to decide on a plaintiff’s claim without a defence.
If you don’t satisfy the judgement, that’s where you start getting into trouble.
What I posted is the US system, as taken from http://www.failuretoappear.org
If you read the article Rockstar did not publicly make these comments. These are the arguments their lawyers are making to the courts to dismiss that case. The court documents were made public and the AP has run with it. Slow news day or intern practicing their article writing skills.
Need more money for the drugs. Best cash grab = lawsuit.
Then the lawyer takes 70% of it as ‘fees’ leaving her screwed.
To be fair, she was already well screwed before this.
Of course, Rockstar would hopefully squash the pest. I mean we all know Trevor is a drug addict who has seriously messed up his life, but Lindsay thinking he’s based off her, jeez. I think Rockstar have some standards 😛
“Rockstar says that Lohan’s likeness isn’t the basis for the character and that the only similarities are that in being a young, blonde woman”
She’s a Ranga though
Plus, GTA modelled it on Shelby Welinder.
Oh wow, I completely forgot about this. I guess you can consider the attempt to stay in the public eye a failure.
It doesn’t matter if it’s bad attention, she seems to only be happy as long as the attention is on her.
I didn’t say it was bad publicity, I’m saying there’s none.
Lindsay was a treasure in “The Parent Trap” 🙂
You know, I’ve been thinking about this. I have a theory there really WAS two Linsday Lohans (Linsday and Cindy, idk). Linsday was a good kid, adorable, good actress. Cindy was a helion, all out of control. We last saw Lindsay in Mean Girls, but then Cindy got wicked jealous, killed Lindsay and then stole her identity.
Yeah.
Think about it.
That makes total sense though. I was convinced the Lohans in the Parent Trap were real twins, i couldn’t believe otherwise. And it makes sense that the current Lindsay aka. Cindy is totes cuckoo bananas now, probably still reeling from the guilt…
I don’t get this, why would the author write this? Is this an off-hand way off the author announcing they aren’t a GTA fan by relating the game series the article is actually about to a game that they preferred? Isn’t GTAV one of the fastest selling games of all time? Surely “the makers of Grand Theft Auto say” would be appropriate here…? /Rant
Also I thought Lacey was Paris Hilton.
Exactly why not say “the makers of the hit franchise Grand Theft Auto” since GTA has been around since the late 90’s and is much more widely known. I’m not sure that many people would know about RDR as opposed to GTA…
Maybe thats the point. People who play GTA may now look at other IPs from Rockstar they were unaware of.
Generally in writing you avoid repetition where possible, keeps the reader more interested and engaged. The previous sentence already identifies their involvement with GTA V, the headline with the GTA series as a whole .
It also subtly gives the information more tangential information they may not know. Now if this wasn’t the absolutely huge Rockstar and a smaller indie dev, name dropping multiple franchises would be more likely to identify who they are if someone isn’t familiar with one of their pieces of work.
The real question is, why are you so offended by the mention of Red Dead?
I have no problem with Red Dead, its a top 5 for my favourite games of last gen, if not all time. Just seems to be completely out of context with the story, and repetition or brand identification doesn’t really seem to fit with such a big developer and such a small article.
Should have said Manhunt.
I maintain that it’s simply more interesting to read if they break up continually re-mentioning GTA, but upvote anyhow because the manhunt comment made me laugh.
The best thing about this is the idea that Lindsay Lohan plays GTA
Tbf I thought it was supposed to be Lohan and so did my wife. Still, she’s fair game.