Lawsuit
In 2002, David Sawicki filed a 1 million dollar lawsuit against ABC, its corporate parent The Walt Disney Company, Shout! Factory (the distributor of AFV's compilation DVDs) and Vin Di Bona Productions over a tape filmed in 1992, which originally aired on the July 5, 2002 episode, in which a couple of friends of the then-Boston University student shaved a smiley face on his chest while a shirtless Sawicki was passed out drunk following a New Year's Eve party. Sawicki charged in the suit filed in Suffolk County Superior Court that he never gave approval for the video to be broadcast, alleging the show was negligent when it disregarded a policy of requiring releases "from all identifiable persons depicted in the video". Sawicki said he did not know who had sent in the video to the show, and alleged emotional distress from the exhibition of the video.
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