Ad Agency Sues Lowe, Alleging Failure to Warn of Sex Scandal

An ad agency that hired actor Rob Lowe to promote a new car in Japan sued Lowe on Wednesday for allegedly failing to warn the firm about the scandal brewing over his appearance with a teen-ager in a sexually explicit videotape.

Hakuhodo Inc., a large Tokyo advertising firm, said it lost $1.6 million after a videotape depicting Lowe having sex with a teen-age girl became public last year, the suit filed in U.S. District Court said.

Lowe was chosen to appear in commercials for Cultus, a car Suzuki Motors Co. marketed in Japan, “because of his positive and wholesome public image.”

Lowe was paid a total of $450,000 for the use of his “image” in the ad campaign, which began in August, 1988, and later was extended through May, 1989, the suit said.

As part of the contract, Lowe promised that he would not “undertake any action that would . . . damage the business or reputation” of Hakuhodo or the car, including committing “a felony or crime of moral turpitude,” the suit said.

Hakuhodo claims that Lowe knew when he renewed the contract in March, 1989, that the videotape made during the period in which he attended the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, Ga., had fallen out of his hands and “the possibility existed of its later distribution.”