Opinion ID: 169483
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Invasion of Privacy Claim

Text: Alvarado and Flores allege that KOB-TV invaded their privacy by broadcasting their names and images on local television. They claim that KOB-TV with negligence, gross negligence, or recklessness published private facts about Plaintiffs and intruded into their private seclusion, thereby giving unreasonable publicity to their private lives and had no newsworthiness or other privilege to do so. However, New Mexico follows most states in defining privacy torts strictly. We conclude that the facts as alleged by Alvarado and Flores cannot state a claim for invasion of privacy. New Mexico recognizes the tort of invasion of privacy and its four categories: false light, intrusion, publication of private facts, and appropriation. Andrews v. Stallings, 119 N.M. 478, 892 P.2d 611, 625 (App.1995); see also McNutt v. N.M. State Tribune Co., 88 N.M. 162, 538 P.2d 804, 807 (App.1975) (characterizing the four torts as having in common the right to be let alone). Plaintiffs' complaint does not specify which categories their claims fall within, but the factual allegations relate only to the torts of intrusion and publication of private facts. [5] Intrusion into solitude appears to be based on the manner in which a defendant obtains information, and not what a defendant later does with the information, which is covered by the public-disclosure-of-private-facts branch. Fernandez-Wells v. Beauvais, 127 N.M. 487, 983 P.2d 1006, 1010 (App.1999); see also Moore, 881 P.2d at 743 (commenting, in dictum, that intrusion is distinct from but related to trespass, and involves an invasion of the plaintiff's `private' space or solitude  eavesdropping on private conversations or peeping through the bedroom window, for example (quotation omitted)); McNutt, 538 P.2d at 808 (defining the tort as an intrusion upon the plaintiff's physical solitude or seclusion or into his private affairs (alterations, quotation omitted)). New Mexico has not outlined the specific contours of this particular tort. Therefore, we follow the lead of New Mexico courts defining privacy torts generally, see, e.g., McNutt, 538 P.2d at 808, and Moore, 881 P.2d at 743, and thus look for guidance to Prosser & Keeton on Torts (W. Page Keeton ed. 5th ed.1984) (hereinafter Prosser & Keeton) and the Restatement (Second) of Torts (Restatement). The comments to the Restatement are particularly helpful, suggesting that the tort of intrusion becomes actionable only when it is deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person, and usually involves a physical invasion into someone's space. Restatement § 652B & cmts. b and d. The invasion may be by physical intrusion into a place in which the plaintiff has secluded himself, as when the defendant forces his way into the plaintiff's room in a hotel or insists over the plaintiff's objection in entering his home. Id. cmt. b. [T]here is no liability for knocking at the plaintiff's door, or calling him to the telephone on one occasion or even two or three, to demand payment of a debt. It is only when the telephone calls are repeated with such persistence and frequency as to amount to a course of hounding the plaintiff, that becomes a substantial burden to his existence, that his privacy is invaded. Id. cmt. d; see also Prosser & Keeton § 117, at 855 ([t]here is no tort when the landlord stops by on Sunday morning to ask for the rent). Alvarado and Flores do not allege that KOB-TV reporters tried to badger their way into the officers' homes, or that they repeatedly approached the Alvarado and Flores at home. Although the tort of intrusion may be implicated when the plaintiff . . . is merely in the seclusion of his home, id. at 856, Alvarado and Flores do not claim that KOB-TV obtained footage through their windows or other intrusive means. [6] The facts as alleged by Alvarado and Flores simply cannot give rise to the claim of intrusion upon seclusion, and thus the district court properly dismissed this claim. The appellants likewise fail to state a claim for the alternate theory of invasion of privacy  public disclosure of private facts. The tort of public disclosure is defined in New Mexico as disclosure which would be objectionable to a reasonable person, and a lack of legitimate public interest in the information. Fernandez-Wells, 983 P.2d at 1008 (citing Prosser & Keeton § 117, at 856-57 and Restatement § 652D). [7] Unlike defamation, there is no requirement that the publicized information be false. McNutt, 538 P.2d at 808 (citing Prosser § 117). The tort of publication of private facts involves the publication of true but intimate or private facts about the plaintiff, such as matters concerning the plaintiff's sexual life or health. Moore, 881 P.2d at 743 (quotation omitted). The questions, then, are whether the disclosures of publication of the following facts, which Alvarado and Flores allege KOB-TV broadcast, would be objectionable to a reasonable person, and whether there is a lack of legitimate public interest in the information:  Alvarado's and Flores's names;  their home addresses, by virtue of film footage of each plaintiff answering his door at home, under appellants' theory that Albuquerque's neighborhoods are very unique and it would be easy to identify where someone lived by such footage;  what they look like/their personal appearance, by virtue of the same film footage; and  the fact that Flores and Alvarado were undercover police officers for the Albuquerque Police Department. A New Mexico appellate court dealt with a somewhat similar fact pattern in McNutt. There, police officers engaged in a gun battle with two members of a group known as the Black Berets and killed both of them. 538 P.2d at 806. A newspaper printed the names and addresses of the officers, allegedly because they would not cooperate in giving the details about the incident. Id. at 807. After the article was published, several officers and members of their families received threatening phone calls. Id. The McNutt court concluded that the officers' addresses were not, as a matter of law, private facts. Id. at 808. Because [t]he address of most persons appears in many public records . . . which are available to public inspection, an individual's home address is a public fact and . . . its mere publication, without more, cannot be viewed as an invasion of privacy. Id. Likewise, a person's image in and of itself is not a private fact. Some commentators suggest that while pictures made of someone without [their] consent in a private place may trigger liability, anything visible in a public place can be recorded and given circulation by means of a photograph. Prosser & Keeton § 117 at 859. [8] But Plaintiffs' complaint here does not allege that KOB-TV obtained images of Alvarado and Flores without their consent or in a private place. However, Alvarado and Flores allege public disclosure of a unique private fact  their status as undercover officers. The McNutt court had reasoned that [t]he plaintiff cannot complain when an occupation in which he publicly engages is called to public attention, 538 P.2d at 808 (quotation omitted), but here the appellants were not publicly engage[d] in being undercover police officers. Alvarado and Flores argue that undercover officers face special risks in that, if their identities are revealed, they are more likely than publicly-known officers to be targets for revenge. In fact, they allege that they received threats as a result of the broadcasts. Publicity of this kind of information is objectionable to a reasonable person. For Alvarado and Flores to state a claim under the tort of public disclosure of private facts, they must allege a lack of a legitimate public interest. [N]ot all matters are of legitimate public interest. Gilbert v. Medical Econs. Co., 665 F.2d 305, 307 (10th Cir.1981) (applying Colorado law). In Gilbert, we endorsed the position taken by the Restatement (Second) of Torts on what type of matters are of public interest: The line is to be drawn when the publicity ceases to be the giving of information to which the public is entitled, and becomes a morbid and sensational prying into private lives for its own sake with which a reasonable member of the public, with decent standards, would say that he had no concern. Id. at 307-08 (quoting Rest. § 652D cmt. h). As New Mexico courts also rely on the Restatement to define the contours of public disclosure of private facts, we believe they would agree. Courts have generally treated allegations of police misconduct as worthy of public interest. See, e.g., Cowles Publ'g Co. v. State Patrol, 109 Wash.2d 712, 748 P.2d 597, 605 (1988) (We . . . conclude that a law enforcement officer's actions while performing his public duties or improper off duty actions in public which bear upon his ability to perform his public office do not fall within the activities to be protected under the Comment [h] to § 652D of Restatement (Second) of Torts as a matter of `personal privacy.'); Santillo v. Phila. Newspapers, Inc., 21 Pa. D. & C. 4th 413, 419 (Pa.Com.Pl.1993) (Police officers have no valid basis for believing that criminal conduct committed by them in their official capacity will not be publicized for all to read.). To the extent First Amendment law informs our determination of whether Alvarado and Flores can allege facts showing that publicity of their identities and undercover status in the context of the alleged sexual assault was not a matter of public interest, we are among a number of courts that have found that police misconduct allegations specifically and officer qualifications generally are a matter of public interest in First Amendment analyses. [9] Street level policemen . . . [have] such apparent importance that the public has an independent interest in the qualifications and performance of the person who holds [such a position]. . . . Misuse of his authority can result in significant deprivation of constitutional rights and personal freedoms, not to mention bodily injury and financial loss. The strong public interest in ensuring open discussion and criticism of his qualifications and job performance warrant the conclusion that he is a public official. Gray v. Udevitz, 656 F.2d 588, 591 (10th Cir.1981) (quotation omitted). See also Meiners v. Moriarity, 563 F.2d 343, 352 (7th Cir.1977) (The public is certainly interested in an important and special way in the qualifications and performance of federal agents, such as the defendants here, whose decisions to search and to arrest directly and personally affect individual freedoms.); Coursey v. Greater Niles Twp. Publ'g Corp., 40 Ill.2d 257, 239 N.E.2d 837, 841 (1968) (noting that the public has a far greater interest in the qualifications and conduct of law enforcement officers, even at, and perhaps especially at, an `on the street' level). An officer's alleged involvement in a sexual assault, even if off-duty, surely bears upon his or her qualifications and fitness to be a police officer. Publicity of undercover police officers allegedly involved in a sexual assault thus qualifies as a matter of public interest in First Amendment law, and we have no reason to perceive a significant difference in New Mexico tort law. Therefore, Alvarado and Flores's privacy claim hinges on a proposed exception for undercover officers, i.e., that disclosure of their identities lacks legitimate public interest as a matter of law. We can find no precedent for such an exception, and we are not inclined to create one here merely on policy grounds, despite our concerns about the safety of undercover officers and the need to avoid disincentives for entering their profession. There are many individuals who enter official roles knowing that there are inherent risks in doing so. All police officers, not just those undercover, face a risk of violent retaliation simply by having their names associated with an arrest or investigation. It would be impossible for courts to quantify the amount of risk that a person faces in having his or her name in the news, and to carve out an exception on that basis for purposes of tort law. In addition to the difficulty we would face in applying such a rule, we observe that such an exception could run afoul of the First Amendment. Alvarado and Flores point to a federal law, 50 U.S.C. § 421, that criminalizes disclosure of the identity of covert intelligence agents as support for a policy exception for undercover officers generally. However, 50 U.S.C. § 421 only criminalizes the disclosure of the identity of federal (not city or state) undercover agents, and only when that disclosure comes from someone who had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, had authorized access to classified information and learns the identity of a covert agent, or was engaged in a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents. In other words, Congress arguably has not significantly implicated the public's interest in an open discussion of law enforcement personnel, because the law only applies to disclosure by someone who had authorized access to classified information (e.g., a government official) or someone engaged in a pattern with the intention of exposing agents. Section 421 does not represent a national policy of criminalizing publicity of a covert agent's identity. If New Mexico's tort law is to be expanded to assign liability for such conduct, it will be up to New Mexico to do so. Indeed, our exercise in judicial restraint ought not to be misread as an effort to preclude the people of the State of New Mexico from deciding for themselves whether to assign liability in tort to the public disclosure of the names or appearance of undercover police officers. To be sure, any rule of law adopted in this area would implicate core and vital First Amendment values, and it is far from clear whether and how such a law might coexist with the freedom of the press. But any foray into these thickets is, in the first instance, for the instruments of government in the State of New Mexico, not us, and therefore are not issues we need reach today. Moreover, courts have not defined the tort of public disclosure of private facts in a way that would obligate a publisher to parse out concededly public interest information, e.g., sexual assault allegations against two members of the police department, from allegedly private facts, e.g., the officers' identities and undercover status. We have held that publication of a person's photograph and name was in the public interest when it was substantially relevant to a newsworthy topic, in that case, medical malpractice, and because the additional identifying information strengthen[ed] the impact and credibility of the article. Gilbert, 665 F.2d at 308. Other courts also appear to give public interest status to news material on an aggregate basis, rather than itemizing what in the news report would qualify and what could remain private. See, e.g., Ross v. Midwest Commc'ns, Inc., 870 F.2d 271, 274-75 (5th Cir.1989) (ruling on a privacy claim where a television show about the potential innocence of an accused rapist used a rape victim's first name and photograph of her house at the time of the rape, holding that not only was the story behind the rape a matter of legitimate public interest, but also using her name and picture of her residence helped persuade the public, and in turn authorities, to a particular view of particular incidents). In short, for Alvarado and Flores to state a claim under the tort of public disclosure of private facts, they must be able to allege facts from which we could conclude that the publication was not in the public interest. Because allegations of police misconduct are in the public interest, and because there is no exception in the law for undercover officers, Alvarado's and Flores's claim cannot survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss.