Penthouse settles with woman featured in topless photos
By The Associated Press
05.21.02
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NEW YORK — Penthouse magazine settled a lawsuit yesterday from a fashion designer's daughter-in-law with a letter of apology and an undisclosed amount of cash just as a judge was about to rule in the case.
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin did not need to rule yesterday after the settlement was announced by Penthouse's owner and operator, General Media Communications Inc.
Neither side disclosed the amount of money to be paid to 28-year-old Judith Soltesz-Benetton as part of the settlement of a claim made after pictures of her were promoted as being of tennis star Anna Kournikova.
But in a written apology to Soltesz-Benetton, Penthouse publisher Robert Guccione said he and the magazine "express our profound apologies for printing pictures of you in the June 2002 issue of Penthouse."
"We made a terrible, but wholly unintentional error in publishing the pictures of you as Anna Kournikova and are taking steps to ensure that no such errors are made in the future," he said.
He said the magazine had arranged for the destruction of about 18,000 copies of the June 2002 issue in its possession and promised to never print the issue again. He said any copies returned by retailers also would be destroyed. Guccione earlier had said about 1.2 million copies of the issue were printed, and virtually all were distributed.
The case was brought in federal court in Manhattan after the magazine claimed that its June issue contained topless photographs of Kournikova. The pictures actually were of Soltesz-Benetton, the daughter-in-law of fashion designer Luciano Benetton.
Judd Burstein, a lawyer for Soltesz-Benetton, said the case was not about money.
"Absolutely not," he said.
Penthouse issued a brief statement in which it said that a settlement had been reached and that the deal would remain confidential.
Lainie Speiser, a magazine spokeswoman, said the deal was struck at 3 p.m., shortly before the judge was set to rule.
The judge had threatened to order a recall of the magazine and to conclude that the publisher was not protected by the First Amendment if he decided the magazine went ahead with the photographs even though it knew they were not of the tennis star.
The lawsuit had sought $10 million in damages.
During a two-day hearing last week, Soltesz-Benetton testified that she believed the photographs were taken about seven years ago, as she sunbathed topless in the South Beach section of Miami.
She said she went topless because she was a fashion model at the time and needed to eliminate strap lines.
She said she wanted to destroy copies of the magazine so her children would not see the topless photographs alongside pages of crude nude pictures of other women.
An apology by the magazine two weeks ago was inadequate because it did not identify her and seemed insincere, she said.
She accepted a tearful apology from the St. Louis man who took the pictures.
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Attorney says order would be 'hydrogen bomb' on publishing industry, leaving magazines subject to recalls any time there is serious mistake in an issue.
05.16.02
