POP/ROCK - Jan. 21, 1988

Free-lance music critic Chuck Eddy of Ann Arbor, Mich., has filed a $500,000 suit against the Beastie Boys, claiming that he suffered “embarrassment and humiliation” because the group used him in a video without his permission. The suit filed this week in a Chicago federal court results from a Jan. 16, 1987, incident when, Eddy claims, one or all of the rowdy rappers sneaked into his Le Parc Hotel room in West Hollywood and doused him with a bucket of water. Someone videotaped the prank, he said, and it ended up on the Beastie Boys’ full-length video. “When someone breaks into the hotel room at 2:30 in the morning--that’s embarrassing,” said Eddy, who described the prank in a review of the Beasties in Creem Magazine. He had interviewed the group the previous day for the article. The suit charges the Beastie Boys with invasion of privacy for both the break-in and using the video without his consent, according to Eddy’s lawyer, Masaru Takiguchi. It also names the hotel as a defendant, claiming that proper security was not provided and that the hotel allowed group members to get the key to Eddy’s room.