Nirvana Baby’s Suit Claiming ‘Sexual Exploitation’ From Album Art Gets Dismissed
By Mikelle Leow, 05 Jan 2022
The Nirvana baby will probably not get his dollar bills after all. A federal judge in the US District Court for the Central District of California has dismissed a notorious lawsuit filed in August 2021 from Spencer Elden, the subject in the iconic Nevermind album cover, who alleged that he’d been the victim of child pornography because his image has been plastered everywhere since the album’s debut in 1991.
Elden, now 30, was four months old when a family friend, Kirk Weddle, shot what would become one of the most memorable album covers yet. Elden’s parents were paid US$200 for the photo.
The picture, matching Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s vision of a baby swimming underwater, was selected among several images of other infants to be used as the artwork. It was later edited to include a fishhook dangling a dollar bill in front of the young subject.
Elden sued Cobain’s estate and widow, Courtney Love, as well as his former bandmates for “lifelong damages” and for giving him “extreme and permanent emotional distress” by putting his nude picture on blast. He alleged that his parents never officially authorized the photo to be used this way, and that the dollar bill added into the picture made him look like a sex worker.
The Nirvana estate filed a request last month to have the case dismissed, SPIN reports. The defendants shunned Elden’s claims of sexual exploitation and child pornography, justifying that anyone who owns the Nevermind album would be a criminal and would have been charged with “felony possession of child pornography” by now. In addition, Elden seemed to enjoy the attention from being in “one of the most famous photographs of all time,” even having recreated the art on multiple occasions.
Now, the high-profile case has been tossed aside in an unforeseen manner as Elden’s legal team had missed the deadline to oppose this motion for dismissal by Thursday, December 30.
Elden’s lawyers said that they hadn’t responded due to “confusion” over when they were supposed to file their complaint, according to the New York Times.
The court has now given the man’s legal team an extended deadline on January 13 to refile a second complaint, detailing that it will “grant defendants’ Motion and give plaintiff one last opportunity to amend his complaint.”
“Failure to timely file a Second Amended Complaint shall result in this action being dismissed without prejudice for failure to prosecute and/or failure to comply with a court order,” says the court, as quoted by SPIN.
Following this, Nirvana’s lawyers will need to prepare a response by January 27. In their current motion for dismissal, they argue that—instead of being sexually exploitative—the photo “evokes themes of greed, innocence and the motif of the cherub in Western art.”
Robert Y. Lewis, one of Elden’s attorneys, comments: “We feel confident that our amended complaint will survive an expected motion to dismiss.”
In their plea to have the case dismissed last December, Nirvana’s estate disregarded Elden’s claims of “permanent harm” and a “lifelong loss of income-earning capacity” by bringing up the times he appeared to have cashed in on his status as the so-called “Nirvana Baby.”
Per Nirvana’s lawyers, Elden personally paid to capture parody covers of himself (clothed) to commemorate the album’s 10th, 17th, 20th, and 25th anniversaries; used his repute to pick up women; as well as sold copies of the album that he autographed.
“Elden has spent three decades profiting from his celebrity as the self-anointed ‘Nirvana Baby,’” said Nirvana’s legal team.
[via The New York Times and SPIN, images via various sources]