A California District Court judge has tossed out a lawsuit against Nirvana filed by a man who appeared on the grunge band’s debut album as a naked baby.
Judge Fernando Olguin dismissed the case on Monday after lawyers for Spencer Elden failed to meet a deadline “to file an opposition to the Nirvana estate’s request to dismiss last month,” the Daily Mail reported.
But Elden, 30, has until January 13 to refile.
Elden became a star when he was just four months old when he was featured on the cover of Nirvana’s breakthrough album “Nevermind,” naked in a pool with a dollar bill floating in front of him.
But as a grown man, Elden accused the band of being child pornographers and filed a lawsuit against Cobain’s estate and the band’s surviving members, saying the band violated federal child pornography statutes and exploited him sexually.
In the suit, Elden says he has suffered “lifelong damage” from the photo and says the band, the photographer, and the record label “intentionally marketed Spencer’s child pornography and leveraged the shocking nature of his image to promote themselves and their music at his expense.” Elden also claims his guardians did not consent to the naked photo.
He also claims “he was forced to engage in ‘commercial sex acts,’ and that the band went back on an alleged promise to conceal his genitals on the album cover,” the New York Post reported.
“The permanent harm he has proximately suffered includes but is not limited to extreme and permanent emotional distress with physical manifestations, interference with his normal development and educational progress, lifelong loss of income earning capacity, loss of past and future wages, past and future expenses for medical and psychological treatment, loss of enjoyment of life, and other losses to be described and proven at trial of this matter,” the suit says.
The 1991 album reached triple-diamond status, meaning it sold more than 30 million copies.
“Defendants intentionally commercially marketed Spencer’s child pornography and leveraged the shocking nature of his image to promote themselves and their music at his expense,” the lawsuit reads. “Defendants used child pornography depicting Spencer as an essential element of a record promotion scheme commonly utilized in the music industry to get attention, wherein album covers posed children in a sexually provocative manner to gain notoriety, drive sales, and garner media attention, and critical reviews.”
Elden is seeking $150,000 from each of the defendants, who include surviving band members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic; Courtney Love, the executor of Kurt Cobain’s estate; Guy Oseary and Heather Parry, managers of Cobain’s estate; photographer Kirk Weddle; art director Robert Fisher; and a number of existing or defunct record companies that released or distributed the album in the last three decades, Variety reported.
Lawyers for the band filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on behalf of the late Kurt Cobain’s estate and the surviving members of Nirvana, calling the suit an “absurd” money grab.
Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent, and ran the Drudge Report from 2010 to 2015. Send tips to [email protected].