NEW YORK – Actor-director Woody Allen has asked a judge to stop a clothing company from putting his former longtime companion Mia Farrow and his wife – Farrow’s adopted daughter – on the witness stand as it defends itself against his claims it used his image on billboards without permission.
In papers filed in US District Court in Manhattan, Allen said Los Angeles-based American Apparel’s requests to summon Farrow, her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn and others including his sister and Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt are a “brutish attempt to smear and intimidate” him.
Allen sued American Apparel for $10 million after it used his image on its billboards in Hollywood and New York and on a website. Allen, who does not endorse products in the US, said he had not authorised the displays, which the company said were up for a week. Jury selection in the civil trial is set for May 18th.
American Apparel lawyer Stuart Slotnick said the company will make Allen’s relationships with Farrow and Previn a focus of the trial to show that Allen’s image is no longer worth the $10 million he believes his billboard appearance merits.
Farrow starred in several of Allen’s movies, including Crimes and Misdemeanours, during a relationship that ended in 1992, when she discovered he was having an affair with Previn, then 22.
During a custody fight, Farrow accused Allen of sexually abusing their adopted daughter Dylan, then seven. Allen was exonerated, but Farrow won sole custody.
Allen, who married Previn in 1997, said in the court papers that the clothing company had shown it intends to use unproven allegations from the custody dispute “in a most lurid manner, to incite the jury’s emotions and poison the jury” against him.
He said it was an attempt to divert the jury’s attention from the misconduct of the company, which is known for its provocative ads of scantily dressed models in tight-fitting and sometimes see-through garments.
The events surrounding his 1992 custody dispute with Farrow and the personal lives of him and his family had nothing to do with whether the company unlawfully used his image and so were “irrelevant and inadmissible”. –(AP)