Opinion ID: 2631844
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Heading: Overview of the Appropriation Tort

Text: In 1890, an influential law review article outlined the contours of the tort of invasion of privacy. Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right To Privacy, 4 Harv. L.Rev. 193 (1890). Warren and Brandeis suggested that increased abuses by the press required a remedy that would protect private individuals from mental distress and anguish. Id. at 195-96. They proposed that the right of privacy would protect a person's rights in their appearance, sayings, acts, and personal relations. Id. at 213. To Warren and Brandeis, the right of privacy did not involve property so much as the more general immunity of the person  the right to one's personality. Id. at 200-01 & 207. In short, they desired to protect the individual's right to be let alone. Id. at 205. Over the years, almost every state has recognized, either statutorily or by case law, that one way that an individual's privacy can be invaded is when a defendant appropriates a plaintiff's name or likeness for that defendant's own benefit. [3] While the exact parameters of this tort of invasion of privacy by appropriation of identity vary from state to state, it has always been clear that a plaintiff could recover for personal injuries such as mental anguish and injured feelings resulting from an appropriation. See, e.g., Reed v. Real Detective Publ'g Co., 63 Ariz. 294, 162 P.2d 133, 139 (1945); Fairfield v. Am. Photocopy Equip. Co., 138 Cal.App.2d 82, 291 P.2d 194, 197 (1955); Annerino v. Dell Publ'g Co., 17 Ill.App.2d 205, 149 N.E.2d 761, 762 (1958); J. Thomas McCarthy, The Rights of Publicity and Privacy, § 1:7 (2d ed.2000). There has been a great deal of debate, however, over the ability of a plaintiff to recover for pecuniary loss resulting from an unauthorized commercial exploitation of her name or likeness. Courts initially had difficulty reconciling how a celebrity, well-known to the public, could recover under the misleading heading of privacy. See, e.g., O'Brien v. Pabst Sales Co., 124 F.2d 167, 170 (5th Cir.1941); Pallas v. Crowley-Milner & Co., 334 Mich. 282, 54 N.W.2d 595, 597 (1952). Such plaintiffs often sought damages for commercial injury that resulted when defendants used plaintiffs' identities in advertising. McCarthy, supra, § 1:7. Therefore, in the context of pecuniary damages, some courts and commentators have resorted by analogy to property law and have recognized a right of publicity which permits plaintiffs to recover for injury to the commercial value of their identities. See, e.g., Haelan Labs., Inc. v. Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., 202 F.2d 866, 868 (2d Cir.1953) (We think that, in addition to and independent of that right of privacy ... a man has a right in the publicity value of his photograph, i.e., the right to grant the exclusive privilege of publishing his picture.... For it is common knowledge that many prominent persons... far from having their feelings bruised through public exposure of their likenesses, would feel sorely deprived if they no longer received money for authorizing advertisements....); see also Melville B. Nimmer, The Right of Publicity, 19 Law & Contemp. Probs. 203, 203-04 (1954). In a seminal law review article, William Prosser described invasion of privacy as a complex of four related torts: (1) unreasonable intrusion upon the seclusion of another; (2) publicity that places another in a false light before the public; (3) public disclosure of embarrassing private facts about another; and (4) appropriation of another's name or likeness. Prosser, supra, at 389. The first three of these four torts protect only personal interests. Id. at 406. But, perhaps in response to the simmering legal debate about the scope of the protection afforded by the appropriation tort, Prosser defined the appropriation tort as protective of both personal and economic interests. In doing so, Prosser emphasized the proprietary nature of the appropriation tort without removing it from the framework of privacy: The interest protected is not so much a mental as a proprietary one, in the exclusive use of the plaintiff's name and likeness as an aspect of his identity. Id. Thus, Prosser's formulation of the appropriation tort subsumed the two types of injuries  personal and commercial  into one cause of action that existed under the misleading label of privacy. The privacy label is misleading both because the interest protected (name and/or likeness) is not private in the same way as the interests protected by other areas of privacy law and because the appropriation tort often applies to protect well-known public persons. Despite these problems, Prosser's view of the appropriation tort was ultimately incorporated into the Second Restatement of Torts. Restatement (Second) of Torts § 652C. Prosser's emphasis on the property-like aspects of the tort has led to a great deal of confusion in the law of privacy. See McCarthy, supra, §§ 1:23 & 5:59. Some courts have partially rejected the Prosser formulation, choosing to distinguish claims for injury to personal feelings caused by an unauthorized use of a plaintiff's identity (right of privacy) from claims seeking redress for pecuniary damages caused by an appropriation of the commercial value of the identity (right of publicity). See, e.g., Carson v. Here's Johnny Portable Toilets, Inc., 698 F.2d 831, 834-35 (6th Cir.1983); PETA v. Bobby Berosini, Ltd., 111 Nev. 615, 895 P.2d 1269, 1283-84 (1995) (We consider it critical in deciding this case that recognition be given to the difference between the personal, injured-feelings quality involved in the appropriation privacy tort and the property, commercial value quality involved in the right of publicity tort. (emphasis in original)); State ex rel. Elvis Presley Int'l Mem'l Found. v. Crowell, 733 S.W.2d 89, 94-95 (Tenn.App.1987). Thus, in those jurisdictions, the right of publicity is viewed as an independent doctrine distinct from the right of privacy. This view finds support in the Third Restatement of Unfair Competition, which recognizes that the right of publicity protects against commercial injury, while the right of privacy appropriation tort protects against personal injury. Restatement (Third) of Unfair Competition § 46, cmts. a & b (1995). Some jurisdictions attempt to follow Prosser's formulation of the tort and provide relief for both personal and commercial harm through a single common law or statutory cause of action. See, e.g., Ainsworth v. Century Supply Co., 295 Ill.App.3d 644, 230 Ill. Dec. 381, 693 N.E.2d 510, 514 (1998); Candebat v. Flanagan, 487 So.2d 207, 212 (Miss. 1986). In other states, however, the parameters or even the existence of the appropriation tort remain undetermined. Such is the case in Colorado.