Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis sue Mail Online over publication of pictures of baby daughter Wyatt
Hollywood power couple Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis have launched a lawsuit against the Mail Online after the website published 'off-duty' photographs of them with their daughter Wyatt. The Press Gazette reports that a privacy claim has been filed in the High Court in London over the pictures, which were taken in California.
The couple is said to be seeking undisclosed damages for a breach of the Data Protection Act as well as compensation for money made by the paper from its "Femail Fashion Finder" feature, which picked out items of their clothing and linked to where they could be bought online.
According to the complaint, two articles published by Mail Online breached their privacy. The first, published on 27 January, featured photos taken "surreptitiously in a parking lot in Los Angeles" when Wyatt was less than 4 months old and allegedly featured close-up pictures of the baby's face.
"Save for one image of [Wyatt] as a new-born, [Kutcher and Kunis] have not released to the world at large any images of [her], nor have they consented to the publication of an image of [her]," the court documents state. "Family outings are not public events but are obviously private and it is reasonable to expect that they will not be photographed [and] published to the whole world."
The second article, published on 18 May this year, picked out Kutcher's "slick sweater" for the Fashion Finder, which the family claimed "constituted personal data".
"The fact that [Kutcher and Kunis] are well-known to the public does not diminish the expectation that whilst 'off-duty' the details of their family outings and/or images of those family outings will be published to the world at large."
The complaint continued: "[Mail Online] has profited from its wrongdoing by using [one of the photographs] to sell trainers to the readers of Mail Online and [another] to sell sweatshirts to the readers of the Mail Online.
"Further information cannot by given until disclosure of the precise arrangements for the payment of commission or other remuneration on such sales as a result of publication on Mail Online. As a result, [Kutcher and Kunis] are entitled to an account of such profits or to the payment of restitutionary damages."
Mail Online has responded to the suit saying it plans on "vigorously defending the claim and has no further comment to make". The paper's latest legal woes come months after was ordered to pay £10,000 in damages to Paul Weller's children after publishing unpixelated photographs of them on a family outing.
© Copyright IBTimes 2024. All rights reserved.