JACKSON, Miss. — Did Kathryn Stockett use her brother’s African-American maid as the basis for a character in the best- selling novel-turned-movie “The Help”? For now, that question may go unanswered, by a court anyway.
A Mississippi judge threw out a lawsuit Tuesday in which Ablene Cooper alleged Stockett used her likeness without permission in a book about relationships between white families and their black maids in the segregated South of the 1960s.
Hinds County Circuit Judge Tomie Green granted a motion for summary judgment, dismissing the case because a one-year statute of limitations elapsed between when Stockett gave Cooper a copy of the book and when the suit was filed. The suit sought $75,000 in damages.
Stockett was not in court in Jackson, the same city where the book is set. Cooper wiped away tears leaving the courtroom and launched into a tirade outside the courthouse. “She’s a liar,” Cooper screamed. “She did it. She knows she did it.” The Associated Press
