Shirley Jones v. Corbis Corporation

MEMORANDUM

Shirley Jones appeals the orders of the district court granting summary judgment in favor of Corbis Corporation (“Corbis”) and awarding Corbis $357,532.91 in attorney’s fees.

Jones contends that the district court erred in concluding that Corbis did not violate Jones’s right of publicity. For both California common law commercial misappropriation claims and claims under California Civil Code § 3344, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant appropriated his or her likeness without consent. Downing v. Abercrombie & Fitch, 265 F.3d 994, 1001 (9th Cir.2001). Consent may be implicit and is to be determined objectively from the perspective of a reasonable person. See Newton v. Thomason, 22 F.3d 1455, 1461 (9th Cir.1994); Virgil v. Time, Inc., 527 F.2d 1122, 1127 (9th Cir.1975); Restatement (Second) of Torts § 892 cmt. c (1979). The district court found that Jones consented to Cor-bis’s placement of sample photographs of Jones on its website for the purpose of selling copyright licenses to those images. Jones admitted that she intended for the photographs at issue to be distributed to media outlets and was not surprised that the photographers would use a third…