Court Opinion

ID: 9579176
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:52:14.56241+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:34:31.275309
License: Public Domain

CHIN, J.,
Concurring and Dissenting.—  I concur in part I of the plurality opinion. The newsworthy nature of the disclosure absolutely precludes plaintiffs’ recovery under this theory, and summary judgment for defendants on this cause of action was therefore proper.
*248I dissent, however, from the plurality’s holding that plaintiffs’ “intrusion” cause of action should be remanded for trial. The critical question is whether defendants’ privacy intrusion was “ ‘highly offensive to a reasonable person.’ ” (Plur. opn., ante, at p. 231, italics added.) As the plurality explains, “the constitutional protection of the press does reflect the strong societal interest in effective and complete reporting of events, an interest that may—as a matter of law—justify an intrusion that would otherwise be considered offensive.” {Id. at p. 236, italics added.) I also agree with the plurality that “Information-collecting techniques that may be highly offensive when done for socially unprotected reasons—for purposes of harassment, blackmail or prurient curiosity, for example—may not be offensive to a reasonable person when employed by journalists in pursuit of a socially or politically important story.” {Id. at p. 237, italics added.)
Although I agree with the plurality’s premises, I disagree with the conclusion it draws from those premises. The plurality concludes that a reasonable person in Ruth Shulman’s position might well have assumed that her conversation with the nurses and doctors assisting her rescue would be kept private. Likewise, the plurality believes, a reasonable person in Ruth’s position might not expect to find media personnel aboard a rescue helicopter. A jury might well decide that defendants’ desire for complete footage did not justify these privacy intrusions. (Plur. opn., ante, at pp. 237-238.)
Ruth’s expectations notwithstanding, I do not believe that a reasonable trier of fact could find that defendants’ conduct in this case was “highly offensive to a reasonable person,” the test adopted by the plurality. Plaintiffs do not allege that defendants, though present at the accident rescue scene and in the helicopter, interfered with either the rescue or medical efforts, elicited embarrassing or offensive information from plaintiffs, or even tried to interrogate or interview them. Defendants’ news team evidently merely recorded newsworthy events “of legitimate public concern” (plur. opn., ante, at p. 228) as they transpired. Defendants’ apparent motive in undertaking the supposed privacy invasion was a reasonable and nonmalicious one: to obtain an accurate depiction of the rescue efforts from start to finish. The event was newsworthy, and the ultimate broadcast was both dramatic and educational, rather than tawdry or embarrassing.
No illegal trespass on private property occurred, and any technical illegality arising from defendants’ recording Ruth’s conversations with medical personnel was not so “highly offensive” as to justify liability. Recording the innocuous, inoffensive conversations that occurred between Ruth and the nurse assisting her (see plur. opn., ante, at p. 211) and filming the seemingly routine, though certainly newsworthy, helicopter ride (id. at pp. 211-212) *249may have technically invaded plaintiffs’ private “space,” but in my view no “highly offensive” invasion of their privacy occurred.
We should bear in mind we are not dealing here with a true “interception”—e.g., a surreptitious wiretap by a third party—of words spoken in a truly private place—e.g., in a psychiatrist’s examining room, an attorney’s office, or a priest’s confessional. Rather, here the broadcast showed Ruth speaking in settings where others could hear her, and the fact that she did not realize she was being recorded does not ipso facto transform defendants’ newsgathering procedures into highly offensive conduct within the meaning of the law of intrusion.
In short, to turn a jury loose on the defendants in this case is itself “highly offensive” to me. I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal with directions to affirm the summary judgment for defendants on all causes of action.
Mosk, J., concurred.