‘Pet of Year’ sues magazine

Press, 7 October 1980, Page 4

‘Pet of Year’ sues magazine

NZPA-Reuter New York An Italian model who renounced her “Penthouse” magazine “Pet of the Year” title last week has sued the publication for SUS 4 million and moved in court to block distribution of November’s issue. 1 ■

“I never agreed to the primeval ideal that I was to be a ‘Penthouse’ slave girl,” said Isabella Lanza, aged .28. “I was the victim of a disgusting fraud.” Acting Justice Charles Whitman, in the Manhattan Supreme Court, ordered “Penthouse” to show by Wednesday why it should not be stopped from distributing more than five million copies of the magazine. Ms Lanza, who said that “Penthouse” had changed her last name to Ardigo, apparently surprised officials of the magazine last Monday evening by renouncing her title at a lavish "Pet of the Year” party at the Lincoln Centre, New York. She said that she had abdicted the title because she had learned that Americans cast a more critical eye on nudity than she had thought. In the suit, she' said that “Penthouse” had planned not to pay her anything for a year except “a potpourri of strange" and valueless gifts” allegedly worth SUS3OO,OOO. . “In return I was to be robbed of all my freedom.. . I was to be a robot for their purposes,” she said. She would not have agreed to be the “Pet of the Year” if she had known what it meant. . Thor, publisher of “Pent-

house,” Mr Robert Guccione, said, “As 1 a result of the papers served on-us by Ms Lanza’s ‘attorney, together v/ith -other , information received’by our office over the, last few days,we ; are now- of the opinion that she is a liar and a thief and that her actions on the night of the ‘Pet of the Year" party were not spontaneous as claimed but deliberately and meticulously ■ in advance. : > “We believe that she, together with others, including a member of the tabloid press, criminally conspired to/intimidate, defraud, and extort money. from the magazine. Her claims In all respects .represent’ a campaign of- deception and dissimulation. ‘Penthouse’ will reply by the most stringent means available, involving both the civil and criminal processes of the law.”