A Greenpoint, Brooklyn, woman was “mortified,” her lawyer says, when Facebook friends and her Pilates instructor awkwardly asked about her starring role in an ad in amNewYork for HIV awareness. “I am positive (+) … I have rights,” reads the Division of Human Rights image, using a two-year-old photo of Avril Nolan, 25, with a flower in her hair and zippers on her shirt. She wants $450,000 in damages from Getty for the emotional distress and humiliation that came with having to explain that she is not infected with HIV to her family, bosses, and “potential romantic partners.” Former porn star Danni Ashe is in the same position.
Ashe, née Leah Manzari, is similarly suing the Daily Mail for using her photo next to a story headlined “Porn Industry shuts down with immediate effect after ‘female performer’ tests positive for HIV.” She is not the performer in question, but the online tabloid used her picture anyway. (“The onetime stripper has been pursuing a career as a fine artist and portrait photographer since 2004, but the soft-core porn site Manzari ran in the 10 years prior made her somewhat of a household name,” Courthouse News Service reports.) Manzari, who “has been featured on the cover of both the Wall Street Journal and soft-core pornographic magazine, Juggs,” wants $3 million.
