The United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia has asked the court to determine if a 14-year-old girl can give consent to have her nude breasts videotaped.
According to information from the Georgia Supreme Court, Lindsey Bullard was 14 when she went to Panama City for spring break in 2000 with a large group.
While walking down what is known as “The Strip” one night, two men approached Bullard and two other girls and asked them to show their breasts.
The men said nothing about “Girls Gone Wild.”
Bullard exposed her breasts and later found her recording had been sold to MRA Holding, Inc. and Mantra Films, Inc., which produced the “Girls Gone Wild, College Girls Exposed.”
The cover of the videotape featured a still photo of Bullard with an inscription over her breasts. Bullard’s image was also shown in television commercials and internet advertisements.
Bullard sued MRA Holding and Mantra Films asking for damages for their alleged unauthorized use of images of her.
In an opinion issued Aug. 27, 2012, Chief Judge Julie Carnes of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia said: “Unfortunately, the very scant Georgia law on this subject provides no clear answer as to whether the plaintiff has a viable claim.”
The judge is asking the Supreme Court to determine whether or not Bullard was old enough to give consent.
“That the plaintiff behaved foolishly and recklessly by baring herself to a stranger with a camera is an obvious fact,” the Chief Judge said in her opinion. “Yet, fourteen-year-old middle schoolers sometimes do stupid things, with little thought for future consequences.”
Carnes’ ruling continues with “One might reasonably expect that there would be a civil remedy for a 14-year-old against a defendant who, without the consent of the young woman or her parents, has plastered the girl’s semi-nude image on a video cover and then paraded that image on nationwide television advertisements.
“Yet the type of conduct engaged in by Joe Francis and his companies is of rather recent vintage, and it is not at all clear that the law has caught up with this kind of vulgar exploitation of a young girl. The question therefore is whether Georgia law has, in fact, expressed condemnation of defendants’ conduct by the creation of a cause of action for a plaintiff who has been so ill used,” she wrote.
Bullards’s attorney has argued that her consent was invalid because she was a minor.
“The men were seeking to see and photograph Ms. Bullard’s breasts for the purpose of using in a product for sexual arousal and catering to prurient interests and probably their own,” attorney Jeff Banks argued, according to a news release from the Georgia Supreme Court. “If an adult man asks a child to view her breasts for the purpose of sexual arousal and interest, it would be the crime of child molestation. A child could not consent to being the victim of a crime.”
The attorney for MRA and Mantra Film, J. Scott Carr, argued that Lindsey’s age “is immaterial to the issue of consent because the common law disability of nonage has never been held to apply to a minor’s consent to the use of her image. The Georgia Legislature and numerous courts have determined that minors upon reaching a certain age are capable of understanding and comprehending ramifications of certain actions.”
The case will be argued during the court’s 10 a.m. session.
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