Last year, the release of the movie ‘Hustlers’ starring #JenniferLopez generated a lot of buzz for its star-studded cast.
However, the film was also met with backlash and even a lawsuit from a woman by the name of Samantha Barbash, who Lopez’s character is loosely based off of in the movie.
In January, Barbash sued STX, Gloria Sanchez Productions as well as Lopez’s Nuyorican Productions on claims that the defendants exploited her likeness without her permission and defamed her character. Barbash didn’t like how the film showed her using and mixing drugs at the home she lived in with her kid.
Now, the producers of ‘Hustlers’ are fighting back in an attempt to get the case thrown out altogether.
The producers are requesting that the judge toss out the lawsuit because Barbash can’t support the claims that she the film used her likeness without permission or that it damaged her respiration, since the film is based on a 2015 New York Magazine article about Barbash and her experience working as a real-life adult entertainer in strip clubs.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, on Wednesday, the defendants on Wednesday filed a motion to dismiss the complaint.
“Plaintiff worked for several years as an adult entertainer, until she was implicated in, and later pleaded guilty to participating in, a widely-publicized scheme to drug and steal from men who patronized the clubs where she and her co-conspirators worked,” attorney Jacquelyn Schell wrote. “This lawsuit is Plaintiff’s most recent attempt to capitalize on her involvement in this scheme. New York law does not recognize a common law claim for right of privacy, but that is effectively what Plaintiff seeks — to either profit from or control the narrative around a fictional story inspired by events in which she was involved.”
The defendants also mentioned that Barbash’s claims of invasion of privacy are ridiculous as she’s never mentioned in the film, nor is there a photograph, portrait, or recording of her voice to make the audience assume the roles is based on her.
“The law simply does not allow Plaintiff to sue over an unauthorized dramatization of her ‘story’ or characterizations of her personality, even if Ramona evokes in some viewers’ minds parallels to Plaintiff,” Schell wrote in the filing.
Furthermore, the defendant continues by trashing her defamation claims due to the fact that if the film does depict Barbash’s life story, it can’t be defamatory if the events showcases throughout the movie are “substantially true.”
“Defendants do not deny that Plaintiff’s story was part of the inspiration for the movie, but Plaintiff has not plausibly alleged that a reasonable viewer would take the one allegedly defamatory statement — the scene in which the character Ramona is ‘using and manufacturing illegal substances in her home’ — as a factual assertion about her,” Schell wrote. “Whether the mixing or dilution of those drugs took place in the women’s homes or elsewhere is a red herring — nothing in the movie suggests that making these drug cocktails occurred in front of children or had any direct adverse effect on children.”
The defendants also point out that due to ‘Hustlers’ being “a work of fiction” of subjects regarding public interest, it doesn’t fall under the category of “advertising or trade under the statue.”
“Even if the Court were to take as true her conclusory allegation that she has suffered harm to her reputation, there is no plausible reason alleged (and no logical reason to believe) that one scene in a fictional movie depicting a character inspired by Plaintiff mixing drugs — rather than Plaintiff’s participation in and felony plea to a criminal conspiracy — was the cause of that harm,” Schell explained in the legal documents.
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