YULEE, Fla. – Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis is nothing if not a genius at keeping his name and his company’s in the news, sometimes in a positive fashion and sometimes … well, not so much.Last Friday a GGW shoot at a bar in Yulee, Fla., resulted in 16 arrests when things got a little wilder than local law allowed. According to Nassau County Sheriff Tommy Seagraves, it’s illegal to operate a sexually oriented business in town or to expose oneself in public. He knew nothing good could come of the situation when a local resident reported a GGW bus sighting.
Darn if Seagraves didn’t turn out to be right, too, when undercover officers posted at The Mill Night Club encountered — of all things! — male patrons encouraging female patrons to expose their breasts for the GGW film crew. Several of the hussies also bared their chests for others to spray paint.
Sheriff’s deputies arrested seven of the women on charges of indecent exposure. They also arrested the nightclub’s owner, two male customers and two GGW employees on obscenity charges. Other male patrons were arrested on charges ranging from resisting arrest and disorderly intoxication to “engaging in a sexual offense in connection with obscene, lewd materials.”
Florida seems to be a hotbed for Francis and his crew, several of whom were arrested in Panama City, Fla., in 2003 and 2007.
Never let it be said Francis can function only from the defendant’s table, though. Sometimes a guy’s just got to go on the offense, which Francis did last week by filing a lawsuit against The Hills star Brody Jenner and his Playboy Playmate girlfriend, Jayde Nicole. According to TMZ, the lawsuit alleges Nicole and Jenner assaulted, battered, slandered, libeled and portrayed Francis is a false light, all of it with significant negligence for the effects their behavior might have on Francis’ reputation and continued personal and professional success. Francis’s suit claims he was minding his own business in Hollywood nightclub Guys and Dolls last month when Nicole struck him in the head, threw a drink on him and then threatened to kill him. Francis retaliated by pulling Nicole’s hair “in self-defense,” and that landed him ejection from the club and a solid round of whacking in the tabloid press as a woman-beater.
The club’s surveillance video of the encounter has circulated ad nauseam on the Web, and the Los Angeles police continue to investigate the incident.
