“Judge Julie” of Playboy TV’s “Sex Court” has survived a close call with a real-life federal jury.
Lawyers for Playboy Enterprises settled a legal battle yesterday that would likely have unplugged the provocative TV show – just hours before jurors in the civil trademark trial were set deliberate.
Playboy agreed to pay a small-time Internet entrepreneur an undisclosed sum to shut down “sexcourt.com.”
The hard-core porn site features the buxom blond jurist “Judge Jill,” a leather-clad judge who poses on her official bench underneath the slogan, “If sex is a crime . . . let me be guilty!”
Playboy claimed it came up with the “sex court” concept first.
Jurors in the case told The Post they were leaning toward delivering a verdict favoring On-Line Entertainment owner Mario Cavalluzzo, of Elmont, L.I., whose lawyer, John Bostany, who compared Playboy to a “bulldozer”
“I think it was the big corporation trying to take it from the little guy,” said juror Robin Barrow of Great Neck.
Cavalluzzo, the defendant in the civil case, had lobbed a $9 million counterclaim against Playboy, claiming “sexcourt.com” was up and running four months before Playboy’s TV show aired.
An injunction forbids On-Line Entertainment from using the “sex court” name.
But Cavalluzzo said to stay tuned. “I’m considering ‘sex-appeals-court.com,’ ” he said.