Problem Questions
1. Roscoe Ruins is a graphic artist who makes a modest living designing T-shirts and
selling them to vendors all over Los Angeles. One of his designs includes two
marionettes, wooden sticklike figures, with the faces of “The Tonight Show” host
Jimmy Fallon and “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert. The strings on the
marionettes are being held by two abstract figures labeled NBC and CBS. The
lettering on the T-shirt says, “We don’t always know what we’re doing, but when
they pull the strings we dance!”
While the message on the T-shirt didn’t seem to make much sense, in the celebrity
dominated environs of Los Angeles, the T-shirts sold well. Colbert apparently
laughed the satire off; Fallon, however, sued for infringement of his right of
publicity. “Using his image without permission for a commercial purpose was an
illegal appropriation,” his attorney argued. Ruins’s attorney disagreed and argued
that the use of such image was permitted under the law. How would a court rule
over the case?
If four of the nine Justices decide the lawsuit has merit, the high court would issue
