Imagine waking up to find out the world believes you have HIV/AIDS but you are perfectly healthy.
A Brooklyn model is suing the world’s largest photo wire service for selling her photo to be used in a HIV+ advertisement.
The NY Post reports that Avril Nolan, 25, is suing Getty Images for $450,000 for emotional distress after seeing the ad in a NY newspaper.
From NY Post:
The ads’ implication that she had the dreaded disease has hurt her personal and professional relationships and caused her emotional distress, she says in the suit.
The suit says Nolan found out about the ad only after she was alerted by a Facebook friend and her Pilates exercise instructor to a quarter-page color ad that ran in the free AM New York newspaper on April 3.
Next to her face were the words, “I am positive (+),” and, “I have rights.”
The ad was paid for by the state Division of Human Rights.
Nolan, who works in p.r., says a New York photographer, Jena Cumbo, snapped the shot years ago but “had no written release or authorization” to use or sell it.
Nolan is also suing the state’s Division of Human Rights for an undisclosed sum of money.
