William Shatner shamed a Texas Democrat for using his photo in a campaign newsletter and demanded that she remove the image, and he has the right to do so, according to a lawyer who spoke with the Dallas Morning News.
"There's a reason why a candidate would use a picture of themselves and a celebrity in a newsletter because it might imply to someone or a reasonable person ... [that] a celebrity does endorse or support that candidate," said Lawrence A. Waks, a lawyer who serves on the Texas State Bar's council for the Intellectual Property Section.
Shatner first tweeted about the image last Saturday.
"Using a convention picture in a political ad is NOT ALLOWED!!" Shatner wrote to Brandy K. Chambers, a Garland candidate for the Texas House." That implies endorsement which never will happen. Please remove my photo and destroy all copies of whatever this is immediately. Am I clear?"
The photo, of Chambers with Shatner at a Comic-Con, was featured in a newsletter Chambers sent out last Thursday.
"If you think a grown woman going to Comic-Con and getting geeked out when she sees Captain Kirk is not what you want in a leader, that's fine, too. I'll be the first to admit I'm not for everybody," Chambers says in the newsletter.
In the future, Waks said Chambers should make sure she has the rights to the photograph and the celebrity's permission to use the image.
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