A judge has once again tossed out a child pornography lawsuit against Nirvana over the album cover of their 1991 album Nevermind.
NBC News reported U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin delivered his ruling to dismiss the lawsuit on Friday, arguing that 31-year-old Spencer Elden took too long to take legal action over a photo taken of him when he was four months old. Olguin declared Elden cannot amend his complaint in order to re-file his suit, but his lawyers have already said their client “intends to appeal.”
Olguin dismissed Elden’s lawsuit in Jan. 2022 after he missed a filing deadline.
The estate of late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, his widow Courtney Love, surviving bandmates Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, photographer Kirk Weddle, and more were named in the lawsuit alleging Elden was sexually exploited in the photo showing him swimming naked towards a dollar bill in a pool.
According to court documents obtained by NBC News, Elden’s attorneys claimed he was made to appear “like a sex worker” grabbing “for a dollar bill that is positioned dangling from a fishhook in front of his nude body with his penis explicitly displayed.”
Elden has seemingly embraced his appearance on the Nevermind artwork over the past decade-plus, recreating the photo, sans nudity, to celebrate the album’s 15th and 25th anniversary.
“The anniversary means something to me. It’s strange that I did this for five minutes when I was 4 months old and it became this really iconic image,” Elden told the New York Post of the 25th anniversary of the Nevermind album cover. “It’s cool but weird to be part of something so important that I don’t even remember.”
“We are pleased that this meritless case has been brought to a speedy final conclusion,” Bert Deixler, lawyer for the defendants, told Reuters.
