- Model-actor Russell Christoff wins $15.6 million lawsuit against Nestle
by : Chris Leeming
Date : Wed, 02 Feb 2005 00:00:00 GMT
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Last week a California jury ordered Nestle USA to pay nearly $16 million to a model whose face appeared on Taster's Choice coffee labels in 18 countries for six years without his knowledge.
Model-actor Russell Christoff (58) had no idea of his fame among the instant java set until 2002, when a woman at a store remarked on his resemblance to the smiling man on the Taster's Choice jar, ChristoffÂ’s attorney Colin Claxon said.
After two decades as a struggling performer, Christoff says he had all but forgotten the 1986 photo shoot where he spent two hours posing as “The Taster” in a red sweater. He received $250 for the job with the understanding that he would be paid $2,000 more if his image was selected to promote Taster's Choice in Canada.
Earlier in the litigation, Christoff offered to settle the case for $8.5 million but Nestle refused, Claxon said.
Christoff wound down his modeling career in 2000 to earn a graduate degree in teaching, and was teaching kindergarten near his San Francisco-area home when he learned he was unwittingly plugging coffee, Claxon said.
Since California has a law barring unauthorized use of a person's image for commercial purposes, Christoff's attorneys, Colin Claxon and Eric Stokel, said they knew they had adequate grounds for a lawsuit.
However, Nestle spokeswoman Yasmeen Muqtasid said the company believed we had permission to use the photograph. However, she would not comment on whether the company would appeal the verdict.
This is not first of its case. In 2002, country singer Wiley Gustafson sued Yahoo! Inc. for $5 million after the online search engine paid him to appear in one commercial but kept using his trademark yodel in others. But than Gustafson and Yahoo settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, and Yahoo continued using the model.