Nestlé USA to Appeal $15.6 Million Dollar Award
If Nestlé has its way Russell Christoff’s won’t be taking his $15.6 million award to the bank.
“Very simply…this is a jury award which will be reviewed by a judge. Nestlé will take all possible means to reduce it”, Perroud says.
The image of Christoff has been used by Nestlé USA for almost 20 years but the struggling actor/model had forgotten he had ever even posed for the photo. Until he happened upon the image in a drug store in 2002, he had never known how successful he’d been. While searching for drink mix Christoff recognized a photo of his own nose, mouth and eyes on the back of a jar of freeze-dried Taster’s Choice coffee.
In the legal dispute that followed, Nestlé USA offered a $100,000 settlement that was refused by Christoff, and Nestlé declined Christoff’s offer of $8.5 million.
He figured the job hadn't amounted to a hill of beans - until he stumbled across his likeness in the drug store 16 years later. A legal dispute with Nestlé USA ensued, during which Christoff declined the company's $100,000 settlement offer, and Nestlé USA turned down his offer to settle for $8.5 million. Christoff’s face has been featured on eight different Nestlé freeze-dried coffee varieties all over the world, including the US, Japan, Canada and Mexico. The Canadian branch of Nestlé’s was the first to use the unauthorized photo, which was subsequently exported to the US when Nestlé was revamping its coffee jars in 1997.
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