LOS ANGELES — Instagram celebrity Mayo the Corgi, also known by the handle @CheckOutMayOverbite, filed a lawsuit yesterday in Los Angeles County against owner Carly Caldera for $51,000 in owed revenue, sources close to the plaintiff confirmed.
“My client’s totes-adorable overbite has been exploited, abused, and unlawfully capitalized on by Ms. Caldera,” stated Mayo’s attorney Mitch Averella, gesturing to an image of Mayo wearing cosmetic braces and a pair of oversized glasses. “He has not once been compensated for these images, which he was led to believe were taken in confidence. Overcome by greed and self-interest, Ms. Caldera has instead chosen to betray my client’s trust in order to pay off her own student loans.”
Following Averella’s opening statements, several reporters excused themselves from the courtroom to tweet that the defendant was “cancelled,” with one dubbing Mayo a “neo-Marxist folk hero.”
“This is classic Silicon Valley labor-abuse culture,” noted Buzzfeed’s Patrick Reed in one scathing piece. “Amazon, Apple, Carly Caldera. Have you ever read Das Kapital? I bet there’s a passage in there about this. It makes me sick. I hope this is a wake up call to all the cats with mild birth defects, docile opossums, and dancing birds of Instagram that you have worth, and you should be compensated fairly.”
Caldera arrived to testify nearly an hour late with a noticeable limp, after a group of protesters reportedly disconnected the brakes in her car.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” claimed Caldera between bouts of crying. “This creepy lawyer just showed up at my house and took my dog — I didn’t even know that dogs could issue restraining orders. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll close the account. I’ll do anything. I just want my little Mayo back.”
Unfortunately for Caldera, several jurors were “taken aback” by the possessive language used in Caldera’s testimony.
“Nobody ‘owns’ a dog. You can be lucky enough to ‘have’ a dog, but by no means do you own it,” said a visibly angry Juror Number 7 during a brief recess. “I hope that dog takes this money and starts a new life where he isn’t constantly pushing the newest tea formulated for a dog.”
When asked for a comment, Mayo simply noted that the ordeal was “rough.”