Inside Lindsay Lohan's Four-Year Legal Case Over a GTA Character

In July 2014, actor Lindsay Lohan filed a lawsuit against video game studio Rockstar Games and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, in New York Supreme Court. She said a character in GTA V was built around her image without her permission.

The Character That Looked Like Her

The character at the center of the dispute was named Lacey Jonas. She was one of the most minor figures in GTA V, appearing only in a brief side mission. The player could encounter her in an alley in the game’s fictional Vinewood district, where she would ask for a ride home.

During the drive, she would complain about the drawbacks of being a celebrity. The resemblance to Lindsay Lohan was most prominent in the game’s cover and loading-screen artwork, which depicted a blonde woman taking a selfie with a cell phone while making a peace sign.

Lohan’s lawsuit was filed under New York’s privacy law, which allowed her to seek damages from Take-Two for the alleged unauthorized use of her image and name for commercial purposes.

The plaintiff contended that the character in GTA V copied many elements of her look and persona, including her swimwear, shoulder-length blonde hair, jewelry, cell phone and signature peace-sign pose, according to a Lexology report.

The mission text also mentioned her role in the movie Mean Girls and her real-life home, Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood.

Lohan’s Past Successes and Subsequent Struggles

Before the lawsuit against Take-Two, Lindsay Lohan was already a well-known actress. In the late 1990s, she became famous starring in the film The Parent Trap, where she played identical twins.

The actress became a teen heartthrob in the early 2000s after the release of the films Freaky Friday and Mean Girls. Her career then took off and she began appearing in family films like Herbie Fully Loaded and serious independent films such as A Prairie Home Companion, directed by Robert Altman.

However, by the early 2010s, her career had begun to slow, and she started working in smaller independent films, such as The Canyons in 2013. Around this period, Lohan also faced a number of well-publicized personal challenges. Nevertheless, she did not stop working in the entertainment industry.

In fact, in 2014, not long after filing the lawsuit against Take-Two, Lohan prepared for her first West End theater role in the play Speed-the-Plow by David Mamet. She first took the stage in preview performances on September 24, 2014, with the production officially opening on October 2, 2014, at the Playhouse Theatre.

A Surprise Victory and a Subsequent Setback

The case against Rockstar Games and Take-Two began in 2014 and saw several significant developments in 2016. First, in March 2016, the case received a notable boost when a trial judge rejected Take-Two’s motion to dismiss.

This came as a surprise to many, since New York’s privacy law is generally considered narrow and difficult for plaintiffs to satisfy in cases like this one.

The same judge also allowed a similar lawsuit brought by reality TV star Karen Gravano, known for her role on Mob Wives, to proceed. Gravano sued Take-Two for $40 million, alleging that another GTA V character, “Antonia Bottino,” was inspired by her.

Her legal team pointed to several parallels, including that both her real-life father and the character’s fictional father shared the first name “Sammy” and were each portrayed as government informants, as well as the use of biographical details and phrasing similar to Gravano’s own story.

Nevertheless, this wave of success for Lohan’s and Gravano’s lawyers was short-lived: on September 1, 2016, the case was reviewed by a five-judge panel in New York’s Appellate Division.

According to the panel’s ruling, both cases (Lohan’s and Gravano’s) were dismissed because Rockstar Games’ use of real-life inspiration for GTA V characters amounted to a work of fiction and satire, a form of creative expression protected under the First Amendment.

The panel also emphasized that the First Amendment protects the right to use fictional characters and to exercise freedom of speech. Moreover, the judges ruled that Take-Two had not used the plaintiffs’ actual name, portrait, or picture, which New York’s privacy law required in order to prove a violation.

New York’s Highest Court Weighs In on the Dispute

Lohan’s lawyers did not give up and appealed to the highest court in the state, the New York Court of Appeals.

At this stage, the case attracted significant public attention, and organizations including the Motion Picture Association of America, the Entertainment Software Association, and the American Booksellers Association filed letters with the court.

These groups argued that a ruling in favor of Lohan could have a chilling effect on the literature, film, and video game industries.

Finally, on March 29, 2018, the court rejected Lohan’s appeal in a 6-0 decision, with one judge not taking part in the case.

Judge Eugene Fahey, who wrote the opinion for the court, described the Lacey Jonas character as an indistinct, satirical depiction of “a modern, beach-going young woman” inspired by a general cultural type rather than any one person.

According to the opinion, this did not violate the privacy law, since the character was a generic artistic depiction of a young woman without any particular identifying physical characteristics, and the resemblance was, in the court’s words, nothing more than cultural comment.

It is worth noting, however, that the opinion left the door open for similar privacy law claims in the future. In particular, the court ruled that a computer-generated image of a person could be considered a “portrait” under New York law.

Even so, in this case, Lohan’s claim did not meet the law’s requirements, and her appeal was denied. Gravano’s case was also dismissed the same day, in a separate opinion.

Neither side commented substantively on the ruling at the time: a representative for Lohan declined to discuss the case, her lawyer was unavailable to the press, and Take-Two did not respond to requests for comment.

A Broader Context

The dispute between Lindsay Lohan and Take-Two is part of a larger debate about the right of publicity in the United States.

According to reporting from the Washington Post, most states recognize some form of “right of publicity” that allows individuals to prevent the unauthorized use of their name or image for commercial purposes.

At the same time, courts have generally held that such use in advertising requires consent, while its use in news, documentary films, or fiction is typically protected under the First Amendment.

It was this distinction that ultimately worked in Take-Two’s favor in the dispute with Lohan. Separately, another detail emerged that further weakened Lohan’s underlying claim.

As reported by the Daily Dot, the woman whose likeness appeared in the game’s cover and loading-screen artwork was actually a professional model named Shelby Welinder, not Lohan.

Welinder confirmed this in an interview with the website Bustle, in which she shared photos from the original photo session. According to Welinder, she was booked for the session in 2012 by an agent who represented her at the time.

After her work on GTA V, Shelby Welinder went on to build a career as a freelance journalist.