Just to show you that there are no guarantees...no matter how big an agency it is.....but sometimes you come out a winner anyway. $$$$$$
Ex-model wants $1.5M for flopped career
BY JOSE MARTINEZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Source NY DAILY NEWS
Friday, June 29th 2007, 4:00
Caitlin Williams
A former aspiring model is suing a top New York talent agency for spoiling her dreams of runway riches by allegedly stiffing her out of a "guaranteed" pageant prize.
Caitlin Williams filed a $1.5 million lawsuit yesterday against New York Model Management, charging that the firm - which touts supermodel Elle Macpherson as a client - ripped her off.
"I really honestly thought, 'Wow, I'm going to be a model,'" Williams said. "And it wasn't like that at all."
The 19-year-old beauty from suburban Philadelphia finished second in a 2002 model search contest won by Canadian supermodel Jessica Stam.
But in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Williams charges the contest was rigged so Stam would win.
Williams also says she never saw a penny of her promised $75,000 payday.
"'Guaranteed,' seems to me, to be what it says - guaranteed," said her attorney Anthony LoPresti. "Yet she was never paid."
Williams, now a business major at La Salle University, quit the modeling business after New York Model Management allegedly sent her on several "pointless and inappropriate castings."
One of them called for her to model wedding dresses even though she was 15, she said.
While on another assignment, Williams was allegedly injured when a glass runway in Brazil collapsed. But the agency failed to compensate her, the lawsuit charges, and "even billed her for the resulting costs" of the busted runway.
"I lost my high school memories and missed a lot of school," Williams said. "And I never saw anything in return."
New York Model Management has previously settled two fraud lawsuits filed in Manhattan Federal Court. An attorney for the firm declined to comment yesterday.
"These are kids with stars in their eyes," LoPresti said. "They'll do anything or fly anywhere to get noticed, but they never see a penny."