The case of a Virginia poultry farmer who has sued a greeting card company for using a photograph that shows him posed with a goose could hinge on whether the slang term “goosing” commonly has a sexual meaning.

The photo of Andrew Marsinko and his feathered friend, who is perched on his thigh, was originally used to promote the 1996 State Fair of Virginia. But after attending an animal auction in September 2006 where people teased him, he learned it had been used in a raunchy birthday card sold by Leanin' Tree, a Boulder, Colo., company.

The image is featured on the front of the card with a speech balloon saying, “Since it's your birthday, you decide -- Would you rather get spanked ...” Inside, the card reads, “Or goosed?”

Marsinko, a member of the American Poultry Association’s Exhibitor’s Hall of Fame, alleges Leanin' Tree and several co-defendants used the photo without his consent and defamed him by using a slang term which “is understood to mean to poke or prod a person in the anus.”

“The statement on the card, together with the image of the plaintiff on the card, create a message that the plaintiff would engage in 'goosing' someone, which he would not,” the complaint says, and that message is defamatory per se since “To engage in the activity of 'goosing' someone is a criminal offense” in Virginia.

Dictionaries are a little less anatomically specific than Marsinko, with one defining “goosing” as “a sudden, playful prod in the backside” and another defining it as “a poke, prod, or pinch between or on the buttocks.”

Virginia Code Section 18.2-67.2 makes nonconsensual “object sexual penetration” of the anus a crime, but does not refer specifically to “goosing.”

Marsinko's suit lists several “disparaging comments” from people who apparently have interpreted the card in a sexual manner. At another animal auction, it says, he was introduced as the “sex maniac from Virginia that traded women for a goose” and “a boy of approximately 10 years of age came up to plaintiff and asked: 'Are you really a pervert?'”

The taunting has been so severe, Marsinko alleges, that he now fears “going into places where there are groups of people.”

But others have said to the flustered farmer, “Good picture of the goose. Can’t say much for you” and “Some people will do anything to get attention” -- relatively innocuous comments that suggest a reasonable viewer of the card would not believe Marsinko would engage in an illegal act of sexual penetration.

In addition to Leanin' Tree, the defendants include the photographer who took the original photo, two stock photo agencies, and the studio that designed the card. A Virginia statute allows a claim for the unauthorized use of a picture and provides for punitive damages if the defendant “knowingly” misused the picture.

A rather more famous plaintiff, Paris Hilton, is currently suing Hallmark Cards over a greeting card that depicts her as a waitress.

By Matthew Heller
12/3/07