When your film career is going nowhere, I guess that means its time to file a lawsuit and hope that it somehow works.

In this case Lindsay Lohan is asking for $100 million and an injunction against an E-Trade baby ad which uses the name Lindsay to describe one of the characters. Blow-han is suing the company claiming that the use of the name Lindsay/Lindsey was chosen specifically to reference her and that in turn she’s owed a lot of money.

Laughing already? Me too. But let’s at least examine the stupidity of it.

First the commercial:

Lindsay “84 minutes in jail” Lohan believes that the milkaholic reference was chosen to parody her struggles with substance abuse and that when factored with the characters name it is 100% without a doubt referencing her.

I don’t know whether Lindsay or her lawyer thought of filing this joke (maybe they are trying to get some bad press out ahead of Lohan’s role in Machete) but I think E-Trade’s legal team is probably having a good laugh and is already sending emails throughout the office joking about Blow-han’s half-assed attempt at a lawsuit.

Lohan’s lawyer even shoots herself in the foot when trying to describe this hail mary of a case:

“Many celebrities are known by one name only, and E-Trade is using that knowledge to profit,” Lohan’s lawyer, Stephanie Ovadia, said in a statement to the New York Post. “They’re using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn’t they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody’s talking about it and saying it’s Lindsay Lohan.”

(Note to lawyers, don’t use the word parody in quotes about these kinds of lawsuits because people might think of parody/fair use when in actuality they need to think of unlawful use of name or likeness.)

First establishing Lindsay as being on the same level of Prince or Lebron is going to be difficult. Under what standard can you legally establish a name with being the property of a specific person especially when the name is very common and no last name is used?

Also to answer her lawyer’s question, if E-Trade had used Susan then they would obviously be referencing addiction specialist Susan Shapiro and her attempt to stop smoking.

Furthermore ’subliminal messaging’ has been the basis of a number of unsuccessful lawsuits against the music industry but let’s move on.

If her lawyer (worst web site ever btw) is arguing that the connection is actually the milk-a-holic reference when taken in context with the name then she is indirectly acknowledging that the general public already associates “Lindsay” and “substance abuse” with Lindsay Lohan (which is true according to Google if you type in “Lindsay drug addict”). With that in mind, advertisers should use care when choosing the names of substance abusers.

The law states that a person’s full name doesn’t have to be used in order to constitute unlawful use of their image but considering how common Lindsay/Lindsey is … good luck. Furthermore if her lawyer is attempting to claim that the suit is based upon the ‘general consensus’ establishing that is going to be near impossible.

This might have been easier to establish in this case if the E-Trade commercial showed the baby getting pulled over for DUI, making out with Samantha Ronson or the baby’s face was covered in white powder (or all three at once). But it didn’t so let’s move on.

Grey Group which created the ad argues:

… Grey Group, which produced the “milkaholic” commercial, said that they “just used a popular baby name that happened to be the name of someone on the account team.”

Seems much more reasonable to me than someone on their team saying “I hate Lindsay Lohan, let’s unlawfully use the substance abuse component of her public image to portray her during one of our baby ads which will subsequently result in a lawsuit for our client.”

Now let’s assume that somehow this lawsuit moves forward … how can one establish damages? $100 million seems like a number chosen to scare people rather than a representative figure for damages.

But then again, Lindsay Lohan scares me.