Original Reporting: More Cast Members From "Innocence of Muslims" Exploring Lawsuit
Multiple media outlets reported today that Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress appearing in the trailer to "Innocence of Muslims", has filed a lawsuit against producer Nakoula B Nakoula aka "Sam Bacile" and YouTube, which hosts the video clip. “Innocence of Muslims” is the anti-Muslim film whose trailer set off protests and attacks on U.S. and other Western compounds in the Middle East.
Several other cast members are also exploring legal reprisals, as the New York Daily News and Indy Star.com have reported. I spoke with Grace Ayers, one of the lawyers working with them, who informed me that actors Dan Sutter and Bob Woodruff and an actress who has chosen not to make her name public are working with her and fellow lawyer Jeffrey Steinberger on civil action.
Woodruff does not appear in the trailer, but said he was part of the cast of the film, playing a "caravan man" in footage that was not used. The unnamed actress and Sutter both appear in the YouTube trailer for "Innocence of Muslims", said Ayers.
With the legal effort in its early stages, no target for civil suits nor amount of damages have yet been set, said Ayers. The legal team is interested in investigating issues such as the financing of the film and organizational involvement in the production, she said. Ayers added that an additional cast member was considering joining the group as well.
According to Ayers, her clients are scared ; she said the actress involved in the legal effort is fearful enough to have left her home only twice since the film became a public issue. Woodruff, with whom I spoke with via the telephone on Saturday, did not sound overly frightened, saying it was better for the issue to be discussed openly.
In many ways, what Woodruff told me echoed what many other cast members have said regarding the production of the film, including that he had no idea that the film would eventually be used to attack Islam or Mohammed.
The actor said he was motivated to pursue legal action by the “wrongness” of changing a relatively innocuous film through dubbing and editing to its present state. When he agreed to participate in the project, Woodruff said, he believed that the film was “some sort of historical documentary”, not the anti-Muslim film that the public is now familiar with.
The change in the content of the film without the cast members knowledge opens up several legal avenues, according to Ayers. She said that she and Steinberger were looking into the applicability of defamation and fraud statutes. No specific target nor amount of damages has yet been set, said Ayers, but Nakoula's legal representation had been contacted today by the team.
Woodruff cautioned against drawing unfair conclusions about those who participated in the film. “It’s just one particular man’s interpretation, not how the American people or the cast and crew feel about Islam or Mohammed,” he said, referring to the producer of the film Nakoula B Nakoula aka “Sam Bacile”.
The actor also expressed regret about his role in the film. “I feel really bad that someone was hurt because of something I did,” he said.
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