Duick claims she was ridiculed by those she contacted about the fictitious man from England after they found out it was a prank, but to her it was no laughing matter.
Her attorney, Nick Tepper, said the Matrix campaign was similar to "Punk'd" a former MTV show starring Ashton Kutcher that featured celebrities being set up by their friends for elaborate pranks. Toyota's marketers used the Internet to find people who wanted to set up friends to be "punked," and Duick was set up by a friend of hers, he said.
"They had some people who decided they wanted to use the new social media, and they didn't really think about the consequences," Tepper said. "Clearly, their objective with those people was to terrify them first and embarrass them second. … Obviously, they're trying to use this campaign to sell to someone other than my client."
In a statement written on behalf of Toyota and Saatchi about the lawsuit, Toyota Spokesman Chad Harp said Duick voluntarily participated in the alleged prank.
"The person who made this claim specifically opted in, granting her permission to receive campaign emails and other communications from Toyota," he wrote in an e-mail.
"It was definitely something where people had to opt in to receive campaign communications," he said. "Numerous people opted in for this campaign. It was a national campaign."
Tepper, Duick's attorney, said he discussed the campaign with Toyota's attorneys earlier this year, and they said the "opting in" Harp referred to was done when Duick's friend e-mailed her a "personality test" that contained a link to an "indecipherable" written statement that Toyota used as a form of consent from Duick.
Tepper, said that during those legal negotiations, Toyota's lawyers claimed Duick signed the written legal agreement, which they said amounts to "informed written consent."
"So if [Duick] signed something, she's informed that she's signing 'A,' but in fact she's signing something else," Duick's attorney said. "It's written and it is consent, but you're not informed about the thing that you're actually signing up for? "It didn't say someone was going to be stalking my client. It was premised upon keeping my client in the dark, upon fooling her that these e-mails were real."
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