KEY POINTS:
One of the stars of the television show Desperate Housewives, Teri Hatcher, is being sued for more than US$2m ($2.57m) by a cosmetics company which says she breached the terms of her contract with them by touting a competing product.
Hatcher's lawyer immediately responded to the suit saying it was the cosmetics company, Hydroderm, which had failed to live up to its end of the agreement and had failed to pay Hatcher fully for her services.
Thanks to the runaway success of Desperate Housewives, Hatcher is one of television's highest paid actresses, earning US$285,000 ($366,768) per episode.
She has taken advantage of that prominence to publish a book, launch her own clothing and accessories lines and lend her name and likeness to an international campaign for a cashmere label.
The fact that she is a successful actress in her 40s - she celebrates her 43rd birthday this weekend - puts her in a special marketing niche for anti-ageing products.
When it comes to lip gloss, however, the path of pure profit does not appear to have run smoothly.
Hydroderm contends that Hatcher and her production company agreed not to endorse competing products as part of a US$2.4m ($3m) endorsement deal signed in 2005.
The company learnt last summer that Hatcher was promoting lip plumper made by Hydroderm's competitor, City Cosmetics, as well as its own product, Volumizing Lip Serum.
"Hatcher's name, image and likeness have been linked to so many competitors' products - at least 17 - that it is anyone's guess as to what product keeps her skin and lips youthful," the lawsuit said.
Hatcher's lawyer, Alan Wertheimer, countered that the lawsuit was an "unjustified and public assault on Teri Hatcher's good name, reputation and celebrity in a transparent and pathetic effort to distract from [Hydroderm's] own failure to live up to its end of the agreement".
He said Hatcher complied with all of her contractual obligations despite "a frustrating series of changes in the ownership and management of Hydroderm over the last several years".
Hatcher will recover "everything she is owed under her contract, as well as compensatory and punitive damages for Hydroderm's outrageous accusations", Mr Wertheimer said.
Hatcher was a Bond girl in 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies and played one of Jerry Seinfeld's more memorable small-screen girlfriends before landing the part of Susan Mayer, the accident-prone single mother on Desperate Housewives.
She won a Golden Globe in the series' first season and was nominated the same year for an Emmy, alongside co-stars Marcia Cross and Felicity Huffman.
- INDEPENDENCE
