Chipotle sued for $2.2 billion over using photo without permission

The burrito chain is under fire after a California consumer’s lawsuit alleges that the company used her likeness in marketing materials, though she didn’t sign a photographer’s release.

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Chipotle is facing a $2.2 billion lawsuit—its earnings over the last nine years—after a California woman noticed a photo of herself hanging in one of the chain’s Orlando locations.

The woman claims she did not give permission for the fast-food chain to use her likeness when a photographer snapped her pic at a Denver location 10 years ago.

Leah Caldwell says she refused to sign the photographer’s release, but that didn’t stop Chipotle from slapping her picture up in several of its burrito dens.

Further, Caldwell alleges that the company doctored the image to give her hair more texture. Someone, she says, also put some beer bottles in the foreground. In the lawsuit, she claims that choice cast a “false light upon her character associated with consuming alcoholic beverages.”

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