## Facts

- Edgar and Johnny Winter are well-known musicians with distinctive long white hair and very pale complexions.
- DC Comics published a five-issue comic-book miniseries, *Jonah Hex: Riders of the Worm and Such*, set in an exaggerated, fantastical Western-horror world.
- The series featured the “Autumn brothers,” villainous half-human, half-worm characters with long white hair and albino-like traits who operated a bizarre “Wilde West Ranch.”
- The Winters alleged the Autumn brothers appropriated and mocked their identities, including a line referring to “a couple of low-rent Winter brothers,” and portrayed them as grotesque, “vile” and “subhuman.”
- The Winters sued for statutory and common-law misappropriation/right of publicity and related privacy torts, and also asserted defamation and false light theories.
- The trial court granted summary judgment for DC, finding the depictions protected by the First Amendment; the Court of Appeal held transformativness required a jury determination.

## Issues

1. Whether depictions of the Autumn brothers in a comic series were sufficiently transformative expressive content to defeat statutory and common-law right-of-publicity/misappropriation claims under the First Amendment.
2. Whether the grotesque portrayal of characters allegedly evoking the Winters could support defamation or false light liability, or was nonactionable fictional parody/hyperbole.

## Decision

- The California Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal and reinstated summary judgment for DC Comics.
- The court held the Autumn brothers were “fanciful, creative characters” with significant transformative elements as a matter of law.
- Because the work was transformative and part of a larger expressive story, the First Amendment barred the Winters’ right-of-publicity and related privacy claims.
- The court treated the challenged portrayal as exaggerated fictional caricature in a fantastical setting rather than actionable factual assertions about the Winters, defeating the defamation/false light theories.

## Legal Principles

- A defendant may invoke the First Amendment as a defense to right-of-publicity liability when the challenged work adds significant creative elements that transform any celebrity likeness into something more than a mere imitation.
- The transformative-use inquiry focuses on the expressive content of the work; the defendant’s profit motive or marketing aims do not control if the work itself is meaningfully transformed.
- The right of publicity is primarily an economic protection against exploitation of identity, not a general power to suppress disagreeable or vulgar depictions in expressive works.
- Highly stylized, parodic, or fantastical characterizations that merely evoke public figures within a narrative are more likely to be protected expression than literal, conventional portraits used chiefly to capitalize on fame.
- Grotesque parody and hyperbole in a clearly fictional context generally do not constitute defamatory statements of fact about a public figure.

## Conclusion

The court held that a comic’s outlandish, half-worm villains that only loosely evoked the Winters were transformed expressive creations, so the First Amendment barred right-of-publicity and related tort claims, and the fictional caricature was not actionable as defamation or false light.


Winter v. DC Comics, 30 Cal. 4th 881 (Cal. 2003)