As readers of The Mary Sue, we’re going to guess that many of you have at least a passing familiarity with the Anne Taintor line of memorabilia, which features smiling young mid-20th century housewife-types accompanied by delightfully disagreeable sayings. (I, in fact, own a flask almost exactly like the one above, which reads “What’s a nice girl like me doing without a drink in her hand?”) But we bet you’d probably be upset if you were walking through a gift shop and found yourself on just such a flask. Well, that or flattered, depending on just how big a fan of the trashy sarcastic housewife aesthetic you are in the first place. But probably upset.
Veronica Vigil—okay, admit it, that’s exactly the sort of name you’d expect a woman on a piece of Ann Taintor merchandise to have—found herself in just such a predicament when her daughter was on vacation in Florida and came across her mother’s 1970 high school yearbook photo on a flask that reads “I’m going to be the most popular girl in rehab!” In November, Vigil filed suit against the company (and a local Santa Fe gift shop that’s been selling the products for years), saying that not only is Anne Taintor in breach of trademark for using her likeness without permission, but should also be found guilty of defamation for linking Virgil’s image to alcohol abuse.
Her complaint reads:
Plaintiff is an active member of her church and does not consume alcohol or drugs. Given the seriousness of the issues of substance abuse in the community in which plaintiff resides, she has held herself out by reputation for her children and her community, to refrain from abuse or even use of alcohol and illicit drugs and has set an example that the issue is a very serious one that destroys families and lives.
Anne Taintor first began her business 30 years ago in Maine, but operated the company from her home in Coyote, New Mexico, where she lived for years before recently returning to Maine. Her merchandise can now be found in twenty five different countries around the world, and you can even still buy the offending flask on Amazon despite it being no longer being available on the official website.
As of now, the suit has been refiled to a federal court, but Vigil’s lawyer hopes to move it back to the First Judicial District of New Mexico, as a local jury would better understand the harm done to Vigil’s reputation. Good thing Taintor’s got plenty of other flasks to choose from—if I were getting sued for defamation, I’d probably want a very stiff drink.
(via Santa Fe New Mexican)
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