HOUSTON, TX — Convinced the owners of SuicideGirls.com are engaging in a “malicious lawsuit and slander campaign” against him, the wife of former Suicide Girls photographer Philip Warner has posted a lengthy Q&A on the couple’s website attempting to shed light on her husband’s side of the story.Almost exactly one year after they entered into a creative-services contract in November 2005, Suicide Girls terminated its arrangement with Warner primarily because SG believed he violated non-compete clauses by shooting content for his wife’s site, Apneatic.com. Apnea formerly modeled for Suicide Girls but told AVN Online in June that she had been fired sometime earlier that year.
In June 2007, Suicide Girls filed suit against Warner in Oregon circuit court, claiming breach of contract and seeking $100,000 in damages. Warner shortly thereafter removed from the Web his photography studio’s website, LithiumPicnic.com, citing financial losses and emotional stress associated with the lawsuit as his reasons for doing so.
Since then, according to Apnea’s posts at ApneaticMedia.com, Suicide Girls has “made no attempts to resolve this matter or attend mediation and are strategically executing a policy of blacklisting [Warner] professionally…. They are threatening models that work with him with lawsuits and have forced at least two of them to sign false statements under duress….”
The non-compete section of the contract Warner and SG signed forbade Warner from working in any capacity with any “SG Competitor,” but it clearly stated, “SG Competitor shall not include single girl personality based sites [sic].” Apnea maintains her site always has been a single-girl, personality based site and therefore is not an SG competitor.
“You’d be surprised how hard and expensive it is to prove that when the person harassing you has 10 times more money to throw at the problem and an attorney highly skilled at creating expensive problems,” she posted to ApneaticMedia. “We have no doubts we will win this if it goes to trial, [but] their strategy appears to be to draw it out and outspend us.”
According to Apnea, Warner has spent more than $10,000 defending himself against the lawsuit so far and expects to spend more than three times that much when and if the suit goes to court.
Apnea also noted that Suicide Girls models who have used Warner to shoot images for their portfolios or have been photographed by him for sales collateral materials commissioned by a jeweler have been threatened with legal action.
“Both of the models were threatened and told that they would be sued,” she posted. “They were also told that SG was in possession of the photos (though they had never left Philip’s laptop). They told the girls that Philip had contacted them and taunted them about the photos — again untrue. Both of the girls were given pre-prepared statements to sign by the end of the day saying that Philip solicited and tricked them into breaking their SG contracts. They were told that they wouldn’t be sued if they signed the statements.
“The irony is that [Suicide Girls founders and owners] Sean [Suhl] and Missy [Suicide] forgot that the official policy on shooting for non-competitive projects is stated on the SG site and clearly states that what [the models] did was allowed. Philip’s non-SG portfolio work is linked as examples of what models are allowed to do!”
Suicide Girls representatives were not available to comment.
