A federal appeals court in the US has ruled that Spencer Elden, the man who was photographed as a four-month-old baby for an image used on the cover of Nirvana's Nevermind album, can revive his case to sue the band, their record company, and the photographer who shot the iconic picture, for alleged child pornography.
Elden originally filed the lawsuit against Nirvana in August 2021, claiming that the cover image is child pornography, and sought $150,000 in damages. At the time, the band’s legal representatives argued that that Elden had “spent three decades profiting from his celebrity as the self-anointed ‘Nirvana Baby’”, and Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, had dismissed Elden’s case as “not serious”.
On September 3, 2022, U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin in Los Angeles issued an eight-page ruling stating that Elden waited too long to file the lawsuit claiming that Nirvana sexually exploited him, based on a 10-year statute of limitations.
“In short, because it is undisputed that [Elden] did not file his complaint within ten years after he discovered a violation…the court concludes that his claim is untimely,” Olguin wrote.
-copy-29e15046.jpeg?w=600)
