Nancy Benoit’s family loses suit over nude photos

A U.S. District Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against Hustler magazine by the family of the late Nancy Benoit.

Judge Thomas Thrash ruled that photographer Mark Samansky did not violate the privacy of Benoit, the former professional wrestling personality and wife of deceased wrestler Chris Benoit. Chris Benoit killed Nancy and Daniel, the couple’s 7-year-old son, at the family’s Fayetteville home before taking his own life in late June 2007.

Maureen Toffoloni, Nancy’s Benoit’s mother and the administrator of her estate, had sought punitive damages from Hustler after it published nude photos Samansky took of her daughter 25 years earlier in its March 2008 issue.

The suit contended that Nancy Benoit, who was married to James Daus from 1981 to 1986, never gave permission for the photos to be used for a “pornographic” magazine whose content includes “graphic and sexual photographs of nude women.”

Daus testified in an affidavit that he was present when his wife, then an aspiring model, posed for still photographs and a videotape in the summer of 1983.

Thrash, however, sided with Hustler in citing the freedom of the press and calling Nancy Benoit’s death “a legitimate matter of public interest and concern”.

“The fact that the Court personally views publication of the photographs to be offensive and distasteful is not determinative,” Thrash wrote.

The Toffoloni family, who live in Daytona Beach, Fla., are still considering a wrongful-death suit against World Wrestling Entertainment.