PRIVACY Flashcards
What are the four types of
invasion of privacy?
- Misappropriation (or appropriation)
- Intrusion on plaintiff’s solitude
- Placing P in a false light
- Public disclosure of private facts (publicity of private life)
Misappropriation is the unauthorized use of P’s name or picture for what purpose?
P’s name or picture must
be used for defendant’s
commercial purpose w/o
permission.
Define Intrusion on plaintiff’s solitude
Intrusion on plaintiff’s solitude is the intrusion into a private aspect of the plaintiff’s life in a private place that is highly objectionable to a reasonable person.
Describe Placing P in false light
Placing plaintiff in false light occurs where:
One attributes to plaintiff views he does not hold or actions he does not take;
The false light is objectionable to a reasonable person under the circumstances; and
The publication is public.
i) Public interest: If the matter is of public interest, malice must be proved (First Amendment limitation).
ii) Public figures: Plaintiff must prove actual malice on the part of the defendant.
What standard is used to determine whether one attributed to P views or actions they do not hold for a false light?
Whether the false light is objectionable to a reasonable person under the circumstances
(objective standard).
Define Publicity of private life
Publicity of private life is the public disclosure of private facts that are not a matter of legitimate public concern, the release of which is objectionable to a reasonable person where the disclosure is communicated to the public at large, and not just to a single person or small group of persons.
D has a rare medical condition that he keeps private. One day while a worker was painting P’s house, he opened the medicine
cabinet and saw medicine for the man’s medical condition. The worker told a fellow
worker who was also working on P’s house about the medicine he found in the cabinet.
Can P sue the worker for public disclosure of private facts? Why or why not?
No, because there was no
“public disclosure” as the
worker only told one other
fellow worker and not the public
(unlike defamation, here the
publication must be made to the
public at large).
An assistant to a famous writer surreptitiously observed the writer as the writer typed her private password into her personal computer in order to access her email. On several subsequent occasions in the writer’s absence, the assistant read the writer’s email messages and printed out selections from them. The assistant later quit his job and earned a considerable amount of money by leaking information to the media that he had learned from reading the writer’s email
messages. All of the information published about the writer as a result of the assistant’s conduct was true and concerned matters of public interest.
The writer’s secretary had seen the assistant reading the writer’s emails and printing out selections, and she has told the writer what she saw. The writer now wishes to sue the assistant for damages.
At trial, the writer can show that the media leaks could have come only from someone reading her email on her
personal computer. Can the writer recover damages from the assistant under invasion or privacy and is so, which theory and why?
Yes, she can recover under the theory intrusion upon seclusion because the assistant did not have permission to access
her private emails and the writer did not leave them exposed for others to see so they were in a private place. Also, this would be objectionable to a reasonable person because people like their private emails to remain private.
