Man whose baby portrait featured on 'Nevermind' cover sues Nirvana for 'child pornography'

The lawsuit by Elden has been filed in the US District Court's central district of California and seeks at least $150,000 from each of the defendants.

The list of defendants include Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, the surviving band members; Kirk Weddle, the photographer; Courtney Love, the executor of Kurt Cobain's estate; Robert Fisher, the art director and a number of companies that were involved in release or distribution of the album over the past three decades, the report added.

A copy of the lawsuit, obtained by Variety, stated: "Defendants intentionally commercially marketed Spencer's child pornography and leveraged the shocking nature of his image to promote themselves and their music at his expense."

"Defendants used child pornography depicting Spencer as an essential element of a record promotion scheme commonly utilized in the music industry to get attention, wherein album covers posed children in a sexually provocative manner to gain notoriety, drive sales, and garner media attention, and critical reviews," it further added.

The lawsuit came as a surprise as Elden, on previous occasions, has recreated the album's cover image (with swim trunks on). He, however, had expressed mixed feelings about the portrait. "It’s cool but weird to be part of something so important that I don’t even remember," he said in 2016, according to The Guardian report.