Country star Luke Combs expressed his displeasure with a fan being sued for selling homemade drink tumblers with his face on them.
A federal judge in Illinois ordered Florida-based fan Nicol Harness to pay the singer $250,000 for copyright infringement after she was accused of using the singer’s likeness without his permission. Her case was part of a larger copyright infringement lawsuit.
Per Tampa Bay’s local NBC affiliate, WFLA, Harness has congestive heart failure and “her only job is selling homemade tumblers and T-shirts through Amazon.” The fan said she purchased the artwork online and sold 18 tumblers for $20 each, making a total of $380.
Harness told WFLA she didn’t find out about the $250,000 judgment until she wasn’t able to withdraw money from her Amazon seller account, which had a balance of $5,500.
“It’s very stressful. I don’t have money to pay my bills,” Harness told the outlet. “I just want this resolved. I didn’t mean any harm to Luke Combs. I quit selling the tumbler. I pulled it down. I just don’t understand.”
Combs shared his feelings about the lawsuit in a video posted to Instagram Wednesday morning.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP
“I was completely and utterly unaware of this,” the 33-year-old Combs said. The “Fast Car” singer explained how he’s working with a company that is taking on counterfeiters making “millions and millions of dollars” from using his image illegally, but he didn’t know about this fan specifically.
“Apparently this woman, Nicol, has gotten wrapped up into that and that makes me absolutely sick to my stomach,” Combs continued. The singer said he was going to contact the fan and send her $11,000 in an effort to make sure she “doesn’t have anything to worry about.”
“It makes me sick, honestly, that this would happen, especially at the holidays. I can’t imagine being in her shoes,” he said in the video. “She was never supposed to be involved in any of this, no fan should ever have to be involved in anything like this.”
Combs also told his social media followers that he planned to fly Harness and her family out to meet him so he could apologize in person, and planned to sell a line of tumblers with the proceeds going to Harness’ medical bills.