Lindsay Lohan’s ‘Grand Theft Auto’ lawsuit moves forward

Lindsay Lohan has not always come out a winner when it comes to lawsuits, but her luck has recently taken a turn over a recent dispute against Take-Two and Rockstar Games over the video game Grand theft Auto V.

The 29-year-old actress alleges that the publisher used and subsequently tarnished her image through a mock character in the video game. Grand Theft Auto showcases a lady named “Lacey Jonas,” an affluent resident who routinely eludes paparazzi and reportedly looks like the real-life actress.

The complaint further states that the video game references Lohan while in the movie Mean Girls, as well as the West Hollywood hotel where the actress once resided. As a result, the suit claims this is a violation of her rights under New York Civil Rights Law.

Take-Two, Rockstar’s parent company, argued that the New York’s privacy law against likeness misappropriation does not apply through works of art.

Furthermore, they claim that the lawsuit has no merit by emphasizing Lohan’s previous cases, including a lost battle against singer Pitbull over a rap lyric. The video game giant finally argues that Lohan “lacks any good-faith basis and can only have been filed for publicity purposes.”

After all was said and done, New York Supreme Court judge Joan Kennedy stated that she must side with the actress and cannot dismiss the case based on the defendants’ documents showing that the character does not look like or reflects on the actress. She also ruled that Lohan’s statements were sufficiently valid, thus allowing for the lawsuit to move forward.

Prior to the ruling, Take-Two had also argued that the actress was too late in bringing up the lawsuit, which the judge also rejected.

“Defendants have not been able to prove, at this juncture of the litigation, that the republication exception to the one year statute of limitations is not applicable to this case because the intended audiences were the same as those of the original publication and the images consistently remained the same,” judge Kennedy wrote.