Don’t Film Me, Bro!
Episode Highlights
Tamera Bennett and Gordon Firemark celebrate 14 years of the Entertainment Law Update Podcast — we are your “old friends.”
Dominion v. Fox Settlement
FOX and Dominion have settled for $787.5 M.
Another costly defamation lawsuit looms for FOX — Smartmatic v. Fox
Smartmatic filed a $2.7B defamation suit against FOX in February of 2021
Lawyers for Smartmatic held the previous record for largest settlement in the history of American media defamation, $177M for Beef Products, Inc. et al. v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. et al..
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Bad Spaniels Oral Arguments
Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. VIP Products LLC. Docket No. 22-148, United States Supreme Court, on appeal from the Ninth Circuit
As discussed in Episode 154, VIP Products produced and marketed a dog toy in the shape of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey that also bore a striking resemblance to the spirit maker’s distinctive black and white label.
Jack Daniel’s sued the company for trademark infringement
Justices Kagan, Jackson, and Sotomayor seemed to lean in favor of Jack Daniel’s
A ruling is unlikely to come for a while
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Afroman — Don’t Film Me, Bro! Cooley v. Foreman
Joseph Edward Foreman, known as “Afroman”, has been sued by seven police officers for violation of the Ohio right of publicity and the common law right of privacy
Officers raided his Ohio home while executing a search warrant that was issued for probable cause of drug trafficking and kidnapping, after which Foreman was never charged
Foreman says investigators confiscated a vape pen, a joint and $4,000 in cash that investigators believed to be the proceeds of drug trafficking
Foreman created several songs about the raid and set them to music videos, which include footage of the raid
Foreman posted images on social media of the officers who conducted the search and sells merchandise, like printed t-shirts, with photos of the police officers and of the judge who signed the search warrant
The videos have millions of views, and Foreman himself posted on Instagram thanking one of the officers for helping him get 5.4 million views on TikTok (this post brought up in the lawsuit)
Most courts have allowed filming police under the First Amendment, unless it creates a safety issue, interferes with an officer’s duties, or violates privacy rights
Foreman plans to counter sue, as the rapper says, “law enforcement officers damaged his property and traumatized his children.”
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