Actress drops lawsuit against drug-store giant, which used paparazzi photo of her without permission.
Drug-store giant Duane Reade posted a paparazzi photo of actress Katherine Heigl on Twitter on Mar. 18 which featured the Grey’s Anatomy star exiting a store carrying two Duane Reade bags. Heigl quickly filed a $6 million lawsuit against Duane Reade for trying to profit from the image without her permission, but legal papers filed Wednesday reveal that she has now dropped the suit.
“Love a quick #DuaneReade run? Even @KatieHeigl can’t resist shopping #NYC’s favorite drugstore,” the Duane Reade Twitter account captioned the paparazzi photo, which Heigl claimed was taken “without consent” and caused her “economic and reputational injury.”
In the lawsuit, the 35-year old actress also stated that the Walgreen Co-owned chain wrongfully tried to profit off of the image by distributing it with the chain’s promotional slogans on its official Facebook and Twitter accounts without her “knowledge or approval.” In doing so, Duane Reade violated the false advertising provision of the Lanham Act as well as New York civil rights statutes protecting use of likenesses for purpose of trade.
However, according to the latest legal papers, Heigl has voluntarily dismissed the Manhattan federal court suit. In exchange, Duane Reade was forced to make an undisclosed contribution to the Jason Debus Heigl Foundation, an animal-welfare charity the actress started with her mother in honor of her late brother, who was killed in a car accident in 1986.
“The parties have agreed to keep the terms of agreement confidential,” said Heigl’s lawyer Peter Haviland, who went on to call the agreement “mutually beneficial.”
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