Los Angeles- Lawyers for Jennifer Aniston have warned publications that they will face an invasion of privacy lawsuit if they print topless photos of the actress taken recently while she was apparently sunbathing at her Los Angeles home. In a blistering letter sent to celebrity magazines, attorney John Lavely wrote that the publication of photographs “showing [Aniston] topless or in the act of taking off or putting on her top” would expose those titles to “substantial monetary damages.”

In his December 3 letter, Lavely wrote that the topless photos were taken by paparazzo Peter Brandt, who allegedly used a “powerful telephoto lens” from a perch more than a mile away from Aniston’s home (though the images, TSG has learned, appear to have been snapped from a closer range). Aniston’s counsel pounced two days after Brandt e-mailed the topless photos to magazine editors with the request, “PLEASE KEEP THESE PICTURES TO YOUR SELF…THEY MUST NOT FIND THERE WAY TO THE INTERNET!!!!”

In a TSG interview, Brandt denied Lavely’s trespassing allegation, saying that he snapped the topless photos from a “public street.” Brandt, who said he has yet to see Aniston’s lawsuit, added that the images were not shot from a mile away, since that would be “impossible…unless you have something from NASA.”

Lavely, of the powerhouse L.A. litigation firm Lavely & Singer, noted that Aniston has just filed a lawsuit against Brandt in Los Angeles Superior Court and that the star’s London lawyers had obtained a restraining order barring publication of the topless photos in the U.K. Aniston claims to have suffered “shame, mortification, hurt feelings, emotional distress, anger, embarrassment, humiliation, feeling of being violated, and injury to her privacy and peace of mind” as a result of Brandt’s “despicable conduct.”