Oops, oops and double oops. <i>Penthouse Sued in Kournikova Photo Controversy Mon May 6, 7:03 PM ET By Gail Appleson NEW YORK (Reuters) - The daughter-in-law of fashion designer Luciano Benetton sued Penthouse Magazine on Monday for publishing unauthorized photographs of her sunbathing topless while allegedly misidentifying her as Russian tennis star Anna Kournikova (news - web sites). Judith Soltesz-Benetton, 28, sued Penthouse's parent company General Media Communications for damages of more than $10 million. The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, also seeks a court order recalling the 1.2 million copies of the June issue of the men's magazine. In a hearing later in the day, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin barred the magazine from posting the photographs on its Internet Web site as had been scheduled for Friday. He also ordered that no further copies of the magazine be distributed before a hearing next week. Victor Kovner, a lawyer representing General Media, said there was no basis for the lawsuit and the plaintiff has not alleged libel. Instead he said Soltesz-Benetton sued on grounds that the pictures were used purely for commercial reasons and not in connection with any article. However, Kovner said the magazine had run the pictures in connection with a news story about Kournikova. 'WRONG PHOTOGRAPH CASE' The lawyer said the company is investigating whether it had misidentified the woman in the photographs. If there was an error, he said Penthouse would correct it. "At most, this is simply a wrong photograph case," Kovner said. Soltesz-Benetton, who lives in Italy, is married to Rocco Benetton. The suit said she is the mother of a 2-year-old child and is currently four months pregnant. The suit alleged the topless photographs have caused Soltesz-Benetton great embarrassment. It alleged it is "all the more degrading" that the photographs appear in an issue that contains such explicit sexual pictures as a fully nude woman "performing fellatio on a plastic male member while purportedly fantasizing about being a slave girl who is raped by an ancient Roman soldier." Penthouse had allegedly obtained a number of unauthorized photographs of Soltesz-Benetton taken of her while sunbathing topless in Miami about seven years ago. The suit alleged that the magazine then published a dozen pictures of the plaintiff misidentifying her as Kournikova. The cover of Penthouse's June issue carries the headline "Exclusive Anna Kournikova Caught Close Up on Nude Beach." Kournikova's management agency has previously said that the pictures were not of the tennis star and that she also plans to sue Penthouse over the photographs. Soltesz-Benetton said in the suit that she learned of the existence of the photographs on May 1 when she saw a television tabloid show about controversy over the photos. "When the television show displayed one of the disputed Penthouse photographs, plaintiff was shocked to see that it was in fact she, and not Kournikova, pictured in the magazine," the suit alleged. </i>
Wow, if they confused her or even are saying they could pass her as Anna Pornokova, well then she must be HOT!
Don't get me wrong, Anna is hot. But I think people make Anna hotter than she really is because there is a lack of hotties in the sport of tennis. Not really any competition for her. But if you put her in Hollywood or in the music industry, I don't think people would think nearly as highly of her as they do now.
Martina Hingis is cute! Mary Pierce is hot! Amanda Koetzer is cute! Gabriella Sabatini was a bombshell back in the day! Serena Williams is... well.. she's an Amazon!
Hingis is ok. I think Pierce is kinda nasty. Koetzer is hot though. Sabatini looks like a friggin man! Serena....well...you said it. So that's like 2 other decent people in the business. Hollywood/music, on the other hand, has plenty more.
But for some reason I am attracted to that amazon Seriously Hingis is hot, I wouldnt kick her out of my bed for eating crackers
A lot of the other marginal players are very attractive. I recently watched a match between someone from one of those former Yugoslavian Republicans, and a Russian. I don't know why Anna gets so much more attention. One of them actually looked better, imo...
Here's her wedding photo...she looks NOTHING like Anna, IMO. http://www.weddingritz.com/en/english/news/content.asp?num=65&pageno=1
I'm betting that Penthouse is bankrupt by the time this is all over. They're already in some trouble as it is; having two pretty legit lawsuits against them is going to really hurt.
jelena dokic man. from my home country, yugoslavia (or actually, now it's Serbia and Montenegro). man, foreign girls...you guys should visit Yugoslavia and check out their women.
Montenegro has some really beautiful landscape, too. Didn't really see too many beautiful women when I was there. But maybe I didn't pay that much attention because I must have been 12 years old or something at the time .
oh really? thats pretty cool that you were there. my whole family actually is from montenegro, and yes, there are some beautiful mountains and beaches there as well. its a nice place to visit. just a tip tho, if you go there bring LOTS of batteries bc if you need batteries there is NOWHERE to find batteries that actually work. it's pretty sad how far milosevic brought that country down from being one of the top european countries (or at least in the middle) to low class and he split up the whole thing...used to be six states, the rest are all independent now. very sad
