On November 12, 1991, Nirvana was on display in Frankfurt. Krist Novoselic (bass), Kurt Cobain (vocals/guitar), and Dave Grohl (drums) are arranged from left to right.
A federal appeals court has reopened a case brought by a man whose nude baby picture appeared on the cover of “Nevermind” by Nirvana in 1991.
A decision from 2022 that Spencer Elden had missed the 10-year deadline for filing his case was overruled on Thursday by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. In its order summary, the appeal court said that Elden’s complaint about the republication of the album cover during the ten years prior to his lawsuit was not prohibited by the statute of limitations. This is because each republication of child pornography might be considered a fresh personal injury.
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The subject of the lawsuit
One of the most iconic pictures in rock music history is the cover of “Nevermind,” which featured a four-month-old Elden swimming underwater with his gaze locked on a dollar note.
Attorneys for Elden claimed in the first lawsuit he submitted on August 24, 2021, that their client had suffered “lifelong damages” due to his participation and that the photograph in question was obscene.
The other members of the band, the person appointed to manage the estate of lead singer Kurt Cobain, and many record labels were named as defendants by Elden, who is now in his 30s.
According to Elden’s complaint, the dollar note depicting a nude infant clutching at it was sexually suggestive of “a sex worker.”
Elden has replicated the picture on occasion after becoming an adult, although he has also hinted in interviews that he is uneasy about how successful the album cover is.
He expressed his unease about the number of individuals who had seen him in his nude state in a 2007 interview with the Sunday Times of the United Kingdom. To this day, I still feel like the most famous porn actress in the monde. He said CNN the following year that people often requested him to attend events in the role of the “Nirvana baby.”
There was an allegation in the case that Elden “has and will continue to suffer personal injury from the Defendants’ possession, transportation, reproduction, advertisement, promotion, presentation, distribution, providing, and obtaining of child pornography depicting him.”
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What’s next
The case will now go back to a lower court where Elden will have to establish that the photograph is child pornographic, something that Nirvana’s lawyers have denied and which the appeals court said was not the reason for their Thursday decision.
The court said in a footnote to their ruling that it was not at issue in this appeal whether the ‘Nevermind’ album cover fulfils the criteria of child pornography.
Legal representative Bert Deixler for Nirvana referred to the decision as a “procedural setback” in an interview with Billboard.
“We expect to prevail and will defend this meritless case with vigour,” Deixler said. CNN has requested response from Nirvana’s representatives. The decision was “pleased” by Elden’s lawyer, according to him.
“Spencer is very pleased with the decision and looks forward to having his day in court,” Elden’s attorney Robert Lewis told CNN. “Every child pornography victim should take note of this decision.”
Nevermind
“Nevermind” and its first song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” contributed to the grunge music scene’s rise to fame upon its September 1991 release.
The album was praised for its groundbreaking rock sound and art, but Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, took his own life in Seattle three years after its release, and the band broke up.
It was rumoured that Cobain had the initial idea of wanting to portray a woman giving birth beneath water, according to Elden’s 2008 interview with CNN. But the compromise, Elden said, was to have the infant swim underwater. This is according to what I was informed.
In January 1992, “Nevermind” peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and remained there for 554 weeks. Over 30 million copies of the record have been sold.
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