NEW YORK, March 16 (UPI) — A New York judge has allowed Lindsay Lohan‘s lawsuit against the makers of Grand Theft Auto V to move forward.
Lohan sued Rockstar Games, the makers of the video game and its publisher Take-Two in July of 2014, alleging that the best-selling title used her likeness without her permission for the character of Lacey Jonas.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Take-Two has attempted to get the case thrown out citing Lohan’s “legally meritless” claims and said that she “lacks any good-faith basis and can only have been filed for publicity purposes.”
However Judge Joan Kenney sided with Lohan’s legal team explaining that she wants to hear out what they have to say. “When deciding whether or not a complaint should be dismissed, the complaint must be constructed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, and all factual allegations must be accepted as true,” Kenney said according to court documents.
The character of Lacey Jonas was featured in various marketing materials leading up to the release of Grand Theft Auto V in September of 2013, even appearing on the cover of the game disc. Jonas is portrayed as a troubled Hollywood star who is constantly harassed by paparazzi.
Kenney also rejected Take-Two’s claims that Lohan filed the lawsuit too late. “Defendants have not been able to prove, at this juncture of the litigation, that the republication exception to the one year statute of limitations is not applicable to this case because the intended audiences were the same as those of the original publication and the images consistently remained the same,” she wrote.
