adult entertainer Nadya Nabakova triumphs against LA Direct Models via her California Labor Board complaint
October 18, 2018
LONG BEACH, Calif.—In a decision released today by the California Labor Commissioner, adult actress Nadya Nabakova (who has since renamed herself Bunny Colby) has prevailed in her claims against talent agency Direct Models Inc. (often referred to as “LA Direct” or “LA Direct Models”) and its owner, Derek Hay, regarding Nabakova’s complaints of being forced to work under unsafe conditions while under contract to the agency, of having her earnings improperly withheld by the agency, and of being improperly charged for items by the agency which it did not have the legal right to collect.
“We are very pleased with this outcome,” said Courtney L. Puritsky, Nabakova’s attorney.
As AVN reported on August 1, Nabakova and Hay were present the previous day before Labor Commissioner attorney Max D. Norris for a hearing on the complaints which Nabakova had brought last January against Hay and Direct Models. Among Nabakova’s complaints at that time were that Direct Models had violated its contract with her by 1) failing to provide Nabakova with a copy of the contract and various addenda which she had signed upon joining the agency; 2) sending her (along with several other women) to be a topless “ambiance model” at a poker party at a Newport Beach mansion where she was solicited for sex and groped; 3) sending her to a POV shoot and leaving her alone in the room with the shooter/”talent”; 4) charging her an agency fee for a “content trade” shoot; and 5) withholding money from earnings she was due, in part because she owed Hay personally for rental of a room at his “talent house.”
In his 20-page “Determination of Controversy,” Norris first laid out what the law requires of talent agents/agencies, one important and long-standing article of which is that agents are prohibited from sending clients to “any place where the health, safety, or welfare of the artist could be adversely affected, the character of which place the talent agency could have ascertained upon reasonable inquiry.” Or as Norris put it, in bold letters in the Determination, “This is an essential part of the agent’s covenant with the artist and its negotiations with the employer (the reasonable inquiry), and an agent’s failure to do is is a material breach of any agency agreement.”
In fact, as Nabakova testified, at the poker party, which took place on November 30, 2017, there were anywhere from 50 to 100 men present, many of them drinking alcohol and some using illegal drugs, and who “took liberties with the models, groping them aggressively and attempting to trade tips for sexual favors”—and when two of the women agreed to perform a girl/girl scene in exchange for tips, they too were groped by the partiers as they performed their sex acts.
