from The Wall Street Journal Law Blog:
In 2002, two 17-year-old North Texas girls were vacationing in Florida when a Girls Gone Wild videographer approached them and asked them to flash their breasts. The girls complied, according to the lawsuit, but only after being told by the camerman that he was shooting a private film. They also signed a consent form and lied to the camerman that they were over 18.
The jurors ruled in favor of the company and awarded no damages, finding that the girls had signed a valid consent form. Said Richard Merrill of Fabio & Merrill, which represented Mantra: “The plaintiffs knew what they were doing. The jury realized that there were no drugs, alcohol or coercion involved in what they did.”
The girls signed a consent form stating that they were at least 18. The lawsuit by the girls was fueled by their parents after they found out what happened, the girls never complained about anything until it became public knowledge that they were on a GGW video.
And seing as the gov'ts case originally included 71 different counts including stuff like racketeering, prostitution, and chyld porrnography
and settled on community service and a fine for record keeping and labeling tells you that the case had no merit and the girls were responible for their own actions... there was no way in hell the gov't could let him off scott free, they had to get him for something... and now the penalty for bad record keeping is up to 5 yrs if the new regs stand and there is still no protections in place for porn producers if models lie about their ages
if this case would have went the other way it woulda set very bad precedent against our industry and we really dont need any more of that