Ex-model's USD 10m 'Couples Retreat' lawsuit gets tossed

New York, July 11 : A woman had filed a 10-million-dollar lawsuit after her photograph was used as a 'masturbatory prop' in a hit Vince Vaughn movie. But the judge has now thrown the case out of the court.

Irina Krupnik said that she suffered "great humiliation, embarrassment, emotional distress, shame, mortification and injury to her reputation and career" when a character in the movie 'Couples Retreat' in 2009 was shown preparing to pleasure himself with a picture of her in a bikini.

The photo was not digitally manipulated. Krupnik accepted that she posed for the picture in a modeling shoot almost a decade ago but she had never imagined that it would be used in a 'quasipornographic context,' her lawsuit said.

"Miss Krupnik, in the photograph of her posed alone on a beach in a swimsuit, simply did not consent to her likeness being fondled by a man preparing to masturbate in a scene in a major studio film released around the world," her court filings said.

She had also posed nude for a magazine and has been a regular at the Bikini.com website.

O. Peter Sherwood, the judge for the case, found the waiver Krupnik had signed at the time of the 2001 Bikini.com shoot.

He considered that Krupnik was paid 1500 dollars for the shoot and she had signed a release 'that not only permits the use of her image for any and all purposes but expressly waives any claims for misappropriation of the right of privacy or publicity and defamation,' reports the New York Post.

Therefore, he ruled that there was no problem with how the moviemakers, who had bought the rights to use the picture for 500 dollars, featured it in the film.