The family of an ex-model who was killed in a gruesome murder-suicide by her professional wrestler husband is locked in a court battle with Hustler Magazine over its decision to publish nude photos of the woman. Click below to read the rest oft he story.
Lawyers for the smut mag argued in an Atlanta court on Wednesday that the First Amendment protected their right to publish the racy pics of Nancy Benoit, wife of former WWE star Chris Benoit, after she and her son were murdered in 2007 because she was deemed newsworthy.
Chris Benoit, 40, strangled his wife and their son, Daniel, in their Atlanta-area home on June 22, 2007, placed Bibles next to their bodies, then hanged himself using a weight machine.
Months later, Hustler published a spread of nude pictures taken when Nancy was 20 years old, trumpeting them as “long-lost images of wrestler Chris Benoit’s doomed wife.”
Nancy Benoit’s family said the magazine didn’t have permission to publish the photos and sued.
An appeals jury in June 2011 decided that Larry Flynt Publishing group should pay $19.6 million in damages, but a federal judge later reduced the penalty to $250,000.
In court on Wednesday, Benoit’s family attorney Richard Decker urged the three-judge panel to reinstate the higher penalty, calling the $250,000 fine a “minor cost of doing business in a pornographic empire.”
“The harm was the absolute loss of the plaintiff’s rights to control her daughter’s image forever and the very important right not to appear in Hustler,” Decker said, according to The Associated Press.
“They never wanted these photos to see the light of day.”
Hustler’s lawyer, Derek Bauer, argued that the First Amendment provided protection for publications that publish “matters of public concern.”
“The public is interested in celebrities. I don’t necessarily approve of it, but that’s for the public to decide,” he said, according to AP.
