Clint Eastwood has been awarded $6.1 million from a company that falsely claimed Eastwood had endorsed its CBD products.
Eastwood, the actor, film producer and director, and Garrapata, a company that owns rights to his likeness, filed two lawsuits in a Los Angeles federal court last year against three CBD manufacturers that had claimed the actor had endorsed their products.
However, one of the original lawsuits was amended in February, instead naming Mediatonas UAB, a company that owns the websites that published a fake interview resembling the Today Show on NBC.
Mediatonas UAB allegedly used a photo of Eastwood from an actual appearance on the show, with links directing consumers to buy CBD products, The New York Times first reported.
But Eastwood had no connection with the products.
U.S. District Court Judge R. Gary Clausner on Friday entered a default judgement after Mediatonas UAB failed to respond to a summons earlier this year, awarding Eastwood and Garrapata the $6.1 million, along with $95,000 in attorney fees and a permanent injunction blocking use of Eastwood’s name and likeness.
The judge declined to award damages for defamation claims, saying the language used to promote Eastwood as an endorser of the CBD products “was not libelous on its face.”
In a separate lawsuit filed in January, Eastwood accused online retailers of hiding his name in metadata tags to draw online traffic to their stores.
