The word going around is that AVN Best New Starlet nominee Jayme Langford’s being sued by LA Direct. At least that’s the word that Langford’s been passing.
If this is true, one might suspect it has to do with the ruckus caused by Langford not making herself available for an Adam & Eve shoot this past November. Information was relayed to director DCypher the day of the shoot that Langford had quit the business. But that fact appeared to be in dispute when Langford put out the word claiming she hadn’t left the business at all.
Instead Langford’s explanation was that she had a falling out with LA Direct [she signed with them in September] and that she had been trying to get out of the agency to join up with A-List whom she quit to join LA Direct to begin with. Langford’s claims were that three weeks prior to the Adam & Eve shoot, she told LA Direct not to book her any more.
Langford said it was her suspicion that DCypher was told by LA Direct that she was out of the business to hurt her career.
Bud Lee, speaking on behalf of LA Direct, corroborated the fact that Langford asked to be released. But it was also LA Direct’s position that Langford accept three of the bookings she had agreed to. It was during that conversation that Langford apparently assured him she wasn’t going back to A-List.
Lee quoted Langford as saying, “I’m tired of this [the business]. I just want to get away from it. I’m just going to walk away.”
According to Lee, the Adam & Eve shoot was one of two shoots that Langford later blew off after she allegedly agreed to accept the jobs.
“She called me on the day that she was supposed to work for Adam & Eve and said I’m not going,” Lee said at the time.
“I said why. She said I just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to take the booking. I just do not want to do the booking. I said I can call and cancel. That’s not a problem. She goes you can charge me all the kill fees you want, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
Lee then advised Langford to think about her reputation and what this incident might do to it.
“We signed her to a year’s contract,” Lee explained. “We don’t really want to end the contract. We thought we were being very successful with her. She came to us from A-List saying she wasn’t getting enough work and they were really nice people over there but they just weren’t getting her the work. I guess we’re not nice people because we were getting her the work.”
Several days after Lee’s comments, Langford put out another statement saying,“I left LA Direct Models on November 3, 2008 and will not continue to book work through them. My time working with LA Direct was very short lived. I realized immediately that they were unable to provide me with the professional representation that I had been used to receiving. I left the agency on good terms, though I am unsure why I still appear on their web site, having quit weeks ago.”
Langford also claimed she sent Derek at LA Direct a text message November 3 saying she was quitting. LA Direct disputes that, noting that in her time with the company, Langford cancelled at least five shoots.
In a follow-up statement LA Direct also said: “Direct Models believes that Jayme is attempting to leave the agency, that she is under contract to, in an attempt to discharge and avoid the kill fees she has accrued to the producers on whom she has cancelled.”
In her defense, Langford then put out the following:
“Derek Hay is obviously flat out lying. He is trying to intimidate me and make me look bad to other companies and I refuse to continue my relationship with them. When I joined the agency he was aware that I was booking work through Cam Smith and our contract is nonexclusive for that reason.
“I agreed to pay off any money owed to them and have already done so. At this point they actually owe me a small amount of money and I have decided to write it off because the accounting woman is out of the office for 2 weeks anyway. LA Direct insists that all of the model’s checks are mailed to them, so that they can cash them and if there is ever any dispute over money the girl is pretty much screwed.
“If Derek thinks I am such a horrible model, why does he refuse to take my photos off of his web site and try to tell me that I cannot leave the agency?”
