LOS ANGELES—The world's best-known name in amateur T&A, Girls Gone Wild (GGW), filed Wednesday for Chapter 11 reorganization in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, according to a report by TMZ, as well as one on Bloomberg News.
Both sources said that three subsidiaries of parent company GGW Brands LLC were included in the filing: GGW Magazine, GGW Events and GGW Direct.
An official statement released by Girls Gone Wild stated, "Yesterday several of the U.S. operating entities for Girls Gone Wild joined the ranks of companies like American Airlines and General Motors having sought reorganization under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy code. Girls Gone Wild remains strong as a company and strong financially. The only reason Girls Gone Wild has elected to file for this reorganization is to re-structure its frivolous and burdensome legal affairs. This Chapter 11 filing will not affect any of Girls Gone Wild's domestic or international operations. Just like American Airlines and General Motors, it will be business as usual for Girls Gone Wild."
According to Bloomberg News, the basis for the filing was two lawsuits that the company, whose current ownership is in dispute although one-time owner Joe Francis may still be involved, recently lost: One by Steve Wynn, owner of Wynn Las Vegas Resort & Casino, and the other by Tamara Favazza, known in court papers as "Jane Doe."
In September last year, a Los Angeles County jury found that Francis had defamed Wynn by claiming, in seeking a restraining order against Wynn, that "Wynn threatened to kill me. He said he would hit me in the back of the head with a shovel and bury me in a hole in the desert." Wynn was apparently worried that the Nevada Gaming Commission might believe Francis' allegation, and sued Francis for defamation. After all of Francis' witnesses denied having heard Wynn make such a statement, the jury awarded Wynn $20 million in damages, and an additional $20 million in punitive damages; however, in November, that amount was reduced by Judge Joanne O'Donnell to a total of $19 million because, the judge opined, the amount was "speculative" ... and that the jury just didn't like Francis.
But this Wynn win was just the icing on the cake. In February 2012, a judge in Clark County, Nevada, awarded Wynn $7.5 million in yet another defamation case against Francis, with Wynn having alleged that during a "marker dispute" with Francis, the soft-porn producer said publicly that he planned to "expos[e] how exactly Mr. Wynn deceives his high-end customers"—an allegation that apparently arose from the fact that Francis had dropped a $2 million marker in Wynn's casino four years earlier and refused to pay it off when Wynn called him on it.
Between those two Wynn losses was the Favazza case. Twenty-year-old Tamara Favazza had been drinking and dancing in the Rum Jungle, a St. Louis, Mo., bar where Francis was filming in 2004 for his Girls Gone Wild series. In the footage, which Francis released as part of Girls Gone Wild Sorority Orgy 2, Favazza can be seen pulling her tank top down a bit to expose some of her cleavage, though when asked to expose a nipple, she's seen mouthing, "I can't." However, apparently one of Francis' assistants then grabbed the top of the top and pulled it down to expose Favazza's boob for about two seconds, after which Favazza quickly covered up her breast, then turned to her friends and laughed about the incident. But she wasn't nearly so jovial when she found out, through a friend, that the footage had appeared on a GGW DVD, so she sued for $5.77 million in damages. Though she lost the first trial of the matter—the jury foreman told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that, "Through her actions, she gave implied consent. She was really playing to the camera. She knew what she was doing."—she won her second bite at the apple in late April 2012 ... and then had to sue Francis in federal court to try to collect.
Though Francis vowed to appeal both the Favazza and Wynn wins, Favazza claimed, as part of her federal court action, that Francis had changed the names of his businesses, transferred assets and closed accounts, all in an attempt to evade paying his legal losses. But Favazza told Bloomberg News that Francis still has plenty of assets with which to pay the judgments, including "a 1971 Gulfstream jet worth at least $2 million, a $10 million mansion in Bel Air, California, and a $30 million beachfront estate in Punta Mita, Mexico, according to the complaint," as well as "GGW trademarks for videos, websites and clothing and apparel total[ing] more than $20 million."
However, Francis' executive assistant Heather Brook told Bloomberg that Francis hasn't owned the company for two years, and that the bankruptcy, which was signed by company manager Chris Dale, was necessary so that the company could "restructure its frivolous and burdensome legal affairs."
