The “satirical humor” of “Hot Chicks with Douchebags” protects its publisher from being sued by three New Jersey women who are depicted with alleged douchebags in the book, a judge has ruled.

Yvette Gorzelany, Joanna Obiedzinski and Paulina Pakos were all photographed with men at a Clifton, N.J., nightclub in June 2007. After those photographs showed up in “Hot Chicks with Douchebags,” they filed a guilt-by-douchebag-association case against Simon & Schuster –- even though they were not identified anywhere in the book.

“[T]he authors depict these Plaintiffs as females who date dubious men,” the complaint, which alleged infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy and defamation, said.

Unlike the thin-skinned plaintiffs, Bergen County (N.J.) Superior Court Judge Menelaos W. Toskos got the joke and summarily dismissed the case, finding author Jay Louis did not make any statements about the women that were “reasonably susceptible to a defamatory meaning.”

“An examination of the entire publication compels the Court to conclude that a reasonable person would determine that the book Hot Chicks With Douchebags is intended to be satirical humor,” Toskos said in a Feb. 6 opinion. “While it may in some eyes be vulgar and tasteless, it definitely is not an assertion of fact that anyone would take seriously.”

In a similar case, an appeals court said a teacher could not sue the publisher of a school yearbook for using a photo of her seated next to another teacher who has a hand raised to his forehead. The caption for the photo read, “Not tonight Ms. Salek. I have a headache.” Salek v. Passaic Collegiate School, 255 N.J. Super. 355 (1992).

“There is no libel where, as here, the material is susceptible of only non-defamatory meaning and is clearly understood as being parody, satire, humor, or fantasy,” the court said.

Toskos found that case “instructive” and went on to cite several examples of the “obvious attempts at satirical humor” in “Hot Chicks with Douchebags:”

For example, how can a person reasonably believe that in 1981 archaeologist Renee Emile Bellaqua uncovered in a cave in Gali Israel a highly controversial Third Century religious scroll suggesting that the “douchey/hotty” coupling was a troublesome facet in early social religious structures? Or would a reasonable person believe that Jean-Paul Sartre stated “man is condemned to be douchey because once thrown into the world he is responsible for every douchey thing that he does”? Or that John Hopkins has a Department of Scrotology or that there was a Theban King Seqenenra Tag, in ancient Egypt known as “gito of the southern city”?

The decision does not augur well for a similar case filed in Las Vegas by a man who is described as a douchebag in the book. Louis wrote of Michael Minelli that his “popped-collar, spikey-haired presence was so far beyond regular douche, so far beyond uberdouche, he could spontaneously create a new element on the periodic tables -- Douche Nine.”

By Matthew Heller
2/12/09