It's about free speech, not the money

In 2007, Paris Hilton sued cards company Hallmark over a greeting card that sort of featured her. The card was called “Paris’s First Day as a Waitress,” and showed Hilton saying to the customer, “That’s hot” — a phrase she used frequently in her reality television show, “The Simple Life.” The inside of the card reads: “Have a smokin’ hot birthday.” It’s basically a spoof of everything we’d expect to see spoofed about her.
However, Hilton wasn’t too happy that Hallmark did this without her permission, claiming “misappropriation of publicity” under Californian law. Two courts refused to dismiss the lawsuit, but whatever the legal process is, I honestly hope that the ending isn’t a “misappropriation of publicity” conclusion, because that would be setting a very wrongful precedent in a case of First Amendment rights.
Hallmark creating a card truthfully (although a few may disagree) depicting what Hilton factually is like. Is someone honestly going to tell me that what Hilton says in the card isn’t characteristic of her, or of what she’s said in the past? Hallmark has every right to create a spoof of her when at the very least, they’ve created a cartoony-version of her, put her in a made-up situation, and added some phrases for the sole purpose of creating an interesting birthday card. In terms of First Amendment rights, it would be as if a newspaper wasn’t allowed to create caricatures or political cartoons of notable people and would get sued for it. How does that make any sense? Part of the First Amendment is being able to incorporate other people in order to deliver a message. It’s ridiculous to say that we can’t freely do so.
Furthermore, in the article it is noted that the “classical” misappropriation case involves the celebrity who is “embarrassed or humiliated by unwanted displays of his or her image.” This is clearly not the case here. This is not a hypothetical case of Hilton drinking out of a beer bong and yelling “this stuff rocks” while totally drunk. That would be false endorsement, and I can understand why someone would have to ask her permission first, but that is not the case here. With the birthday card, she is not endorsing anything, and certainly nothing “embarrassing or humiliating.” This whole lawsuit revolves around Hiliton’s desire to get some cash out of Hallmark, and money shouldn’t get in the way of our First Amendment rights.
-Siyang Liu