LEGAL FILE

Judgment Upheld: Blues stylist-singer Tom Waits has won a federal appeals court ruling in San Francisco upholding a $2.5-million judgment against an advertising company that hired a gravel-voiced sound-alike for a Doritos commercial. Frito-Lay Inc.’s ad agency, Tracy-Locke Inc., deliberately hired a singer to imitate Waits, knew he refused to make commercials and also knew of a precedent-setting ruling in a Bette Midler misrepresentation case only three months earlier, said the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court ruled that the company’s action tarnished “the artistic integrity” Waits had striven to achieve.