Former NHL player awarded $54m for name in "Spawn" comic book. Slander, my ass.

[dantheman]

@Optihut

I didn’t even know a real person by the name of “Tony Twist” actually exists. To me it does sound exactly like it’s a name from a comic book.

My vote goes to frivolous lawsuit.

On what grounds? For what reason? Because you didn’t know that was his real name?

[Gadarene]

My vote goes to frivolous lawsuit.

Without getting into the merits of this particular lawsuit, doesn’t the fact that the jury actually found for the guy sort of tend against cries of frivolousness, at least until the trial judge or any appellate judges get another crack at overturning the verdict? To me, a frivolous lawsuit is much more likely to be one in which, y’know, the guy gets laughed out of court. To argue that a successful lawsuit (and successful twice over, now) is frivolous seems more of an argument that the law should be changed than that this guy is somehow exploiting the legal system by filing a claim that seems to be gasp colorable.

I mean, the right of publicity is a rich and interesting area of the law - read about the Vanna White robot case sometime. Sounds to me like Twist’s claim was well within the bounds of the current doctrine. Now, maybe it’s stupid that such a thing can be a valid legal claim, but then your beef’s not with Twist, it’s with the legal system itself. And I guarantee you that the judge and the jury know a hell of a lot more about the law and its application to the facts of this case than you can glean by reading a newspaper article.

It’s like the McDonald’s coffee case: people screaming about the overlitigiousness of society in that instance would have been on much firmer ground, IMHO, had the jury found against the woman, or had the judge overturned the jury verdict in its entirety, or had the judgment been reversed on appeal. There are a lot of good reasons that the law is the way it is today. It can clearly be improved upon, but it is, in any case, a hell of a lot more complex than ‘That person got money for something they shouldn’t have got money for!’

[Optihut]

@dantheman

On what grounds? For what reason? Because you didn’t know that was his real name?

The name strikes me as real as the name Randy Ridiculous.
If the comic book character Twist is supposed to be the real life person Twist, then the ruling would be ok. If it’s just a comic book character with a silly name that’s typical for the genre, then I think it isn’t justified. Going by the name alone, I believe the latter scenario is more likely than actual slander.

[Gadarene]

Well, as has been mentioned upthread, there are apparently circumstances which indicate that MacFarlane, who’s a hockey fan, deliberately used Twist’s name.

By the way, people keep using the word slander. It’s not. It’s not slander, libel, or defamation generally. At least, that’s not the ground on which the jury decided. Rather, Twist succesfully asserted a right of publicity claim against MacFarlane.

The right of publicity is generally defined as an individual’s right to control and profit from the commercial use of his/her name, likeness and persona, which shall be referred to in this article as the “individual’s identity”. Protecting the individual from the loss of commercial value resulting from the unauthorized appropriation of an individual’s identity for commercial purposes is the principle purpose of this body of law.

Totally different from slander.

[zut]

Well, this court opinion seems to contain some pretty lcear evidence.

Each issue of the Spawn comic book contains a section entitled “Spawning Ground” in which fan letters are published and McFarlane responds to fan questions. In the September 1994 issue, McFarlane admitted that some of the Spawn characters were named after professional hockey players, including the “Tony Twist” character: “Antonio Twistelli, a/k/a Tony Twist, is actually the name of a hockey player of the Quebec Nordiques.” And, again, in the November 1994 issue, McFarlane stated that the name of the fictional character was based on Twist, a real hockey player, and further promised the readers that they “will continue to see current and past hockey players’ names in my books.”

In April 1996, Wizard, a trade magazine for the comic book industry, interviewed McFarlane. In the published article, “Spawning Ground: A Look at the Real Life People Spawn Characters Are Based Upon,” McFarlane is quoted as saying that he uses the names of real-life people to create the identities of the characters. Brief biographies and drawings of the Spawn characters follow the McFarlane interview. The paragraph devoted to the “Tony Twist” character contained a drawing of the character accompanied by the following description:
First Appearance: Spawn # 6
Real-Life Persona: Tony Twist.
Relation: NHL St. Louis Blues right winger.
The Mafia don that has made life exceedingly rough for Al Simmons and his loved ones, in addition to putting out an ill-advised contract on the Violator, is named for former Quebec Nordiques hockey player Tony Twist, now a renowned enforcer (i.e. “Goon”) for the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League.
Below the character description was a photo of a Tony Twist hockey trading card, in which Twist was pictured in his St. Louis Blues hockey jersey.

Ayep. I’d call that deliberately using Twist’s name.