Lohan lawyer's amazing, amusing attack on E*Trade
In new court papers, a lawyer for Lindsay Lohan claims that E*Trade's Super Bowl ad, which featured a milkaholic called "Lindsay," could not refer to any other Lindsay.
Court papers are serious documents. They present serious arguments about serious issues that often have serious consequences.
However, I have just pored through a new 27-page submission by Lindsay Lohan's legal representative, Stephanie Ovadia, and I found myself moved. In many ways beyond the serious.
Should you have missed Lohan's reason for this particular court battle, she is alleging that a Super Bowl ad for E*Trade mocked her persona because it included a character (a baby, surprisingly enough) who was a milkaholic (as well as a boy-stealer) and happened to be called Lindsay.
E*Trade has moved to dismiss the case. So Ovadia filed new papers with the New York Supreme Court to avoid such a dismissal.
The papers verge on the comical, partly because of the factual content and partly because of the way that content is presented.
The crux of the argument is that, just as when anyone says "Tiger" they think of, say, Rachel Uchitel and the concept of the bimbus, so when anyone says "Lindsay," they automatically think of La Lohan rather than, say, Lindsay Wagner, Lindsay Davenport, or Lindsey Vonn.
I mention the concept of the bimbus, because Ovadia refers to this very concept too. Please wait for that. It's worth it.
In the meantime, please consider this: Ovadia is claiming that E*Trade and its ad agency "could not think of a better name than 'Lindsay' in their brain storming sessions, and ultimately going in for the name 'Lindsay' on their commercials, where they were to depict (sic) character in their advertisement, in an intoxicating state of mind."
This was the point at which I myself reached an intoxicating state of mind, which led me to find the idea of being intoxicated quite a positive one.
However, I am glad that I waited, as I might have missed the bimbus angle. In discussing why this character was named Lindsay because of Lohan, rather than Vonn, Davenport et al, Ovadia offered logic very flattering to her client.
"The type of a particular role and persona, the role of an alcoholic bimbus woman, that (sic) Defendants were looking for in their said commercial, none of the other celebrity "Lindsay" as (sic) referred by Defendants...fits into," declare Ovadia's papers.
So it seems as if the lawyer is asking the court to believe that the name was chosen because Lohan is the only possible famous Lindsay who could be "an alcoholic bimbus." (But not, perhaps, a milkaholic one.)
Perhaps her lawyer is right. Perhaps the ad agency's claims that it "just used a popular baby name that happened to be the name of someone on the account team" might not be true. (The papers suggest that the ad agency's favorite nickname for the character was "flank-steak woman" rather than "milkaholic.") Perhaps her invocation of cases involving Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Woody Allen, and others will persuade.
Perhaps, too, this is one of the more original and entertaining arguments in an attempt to secure $100 million: only my client fits the description of being "an alcoholic bimbus." One awaits the judgment with a glass of milk and a bottle of Kahlua in the fridge.