Opinion ID: 76259
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Relational Right of Privacy 3

Text: 27 Erica and Billie-Jo Tyne (the Tynes), separate and apart from the other Tyne Plaintiffs, contest the district court's grant of summary judgment to Warner Bros. on their claims that the Picture portrayed their father in a false light. While conceding that false light invasion of privacy claims are generally non-descendible, the Tynes argue that the district court erred in failing to recognize their own, individual relational right of privacy. This novel contention is premised upon the personal invasion of privacy that the Tynes themselves experienced when their father was publicized in a false light. The Tyne daughters assert that the Picture falsely vilified their father as an obsessed boat captain and that this portrayal was egregiously painful and injurious. 28 Because the Tynes assert their right to recover for a relational invasion of privacy under the common law of the State of Florida, that state's law controls our inquiry. See Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 78, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188 (1938) (Except in matters governed by the Federal Constitution or by Acts of Congress, the law to be applied in any case is the law of the State.). Florida's general rule is that relatives of a decedent may not maintain a cause of action for invasion of privacy either based on their own privacy interests or as a representative for the deceased where the alleged invasion was directed, as was the case here, primarily at the deceased. Loft, 408 So.2d at 623. While the Florida courts have expressly declined to foreclose all invasion of privacy actions brought by the relatives of a decedent, it is clear that such actions are heavily disfavored. See id. at 624 (stating that relatives must shoulder a heavy burden in establishing [such] a cause of action). 29 The sole exception to the general rule against the descendibility of false light claims occurs when plaintiffs experience an independent violation of their own personal privacy rights other than the violation alleged to have occurred indirectly by virtue of the publicity given to the deceased.... Williams v. City of Minneola, 575 So.2d 683, 689 (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 5th Dist.1991). The rationale behind this exception is that the relatives of the deceased have their own privacy interest in protecting their rights in the character and memory of the deceased as well as the right to recover for their own humiliation and wounded feelings caused by the publication. Loft, 408 So.2d at 624. This relational right of privacy is very limited and applies only where a defendant's conduct towards a decedent [is] found to be sufficiently egregious to give rise to an independent cause of action in favor of members of [the] decedent's immediate family. Id. Such unusual circumstances are rare and, as a result, claims for a derivative right to pursue false light claims will usually be barred. Id. 30 Based on the foregoing standard, we concur with the district court that the Picture's portrayal of Billy Tyne was not sufficiently egregious to warrant invocation of the relational right of privacy doctrine. The Florida Courts have made it plain that this exception was not crafted to provide a derivative cause of action for minor technical inaccuracies, or even major ones. See id.; Williams, 575 So.2d at 689-90. Rather, the defendant's treatment of the decedent must be egregious. Loft, 408 So.2d at 624. The Perfect Storm 's portrayal of Billy Tyne, while perhaps not entirely ingenuous, falls considerably short of this standard. The Fourth District of the Florida Court of Appeals reached a similar conclusion in Loft, where the decedent was portrayed as a ghost that haunted various Eastern Airlines flights. See id. at 620. That portrayal was not of a sufficiently egregious nature to establish a claim of invasion of privacy .... Id. at 625; compare with Williams, 575 So.2d at 690 (finding that the display of grotesque pictures of a deceased's body was precisely the sort of egregious situations envisioned in Loft,  but refusing to reverse the district court's grant of summary judgment based on a limited display of the videotape and the photographs). We do not believe that the Florida courts, in crafting this limited relational right to privacy, intended to extend the exception to depictions that are merely inaccurate or dramatized. Accordingly, we conclude that the exception is inapplicable in this case. 31 QUESTION CERTIFIED to the Florida Supreme Court regarding the scope of Fla. Stat. § 540.08.