Court Opinion

ID: 9782039
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 17:52:12.970165+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:45.290288
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice MULLARKEY,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent because I believe the majority opinion fails to sufficiently justify its decision to eliminate the tort of false light invasion of privacy from this jurisdiction.
By refusing to formally recognize the tort of false light invasion of privacy, the court today narrows privacy protections in Colorado and closes an independent avenue of relief available to plaintiffs in thirty other states. See maj. op. at 897 n. 7; Bueno v. Denver Publ'g. Co., 82 P.3d 491, 495 (Colo.App.2000). In so holding, the court deprives plaintiffs of a tort that effectively has been recognized in this jurisdiction for many years. As for the immediate ramifications of this decision, the court precludes Plaintiff Eddie Bueno from recovering under his false light claim for harm caused to him by a Rocky Mountain News article, sending him back to the court of appeals with the burden of resurrecting his defamation arguments.
*905Today's majority opinion offers two primary rationales for its decision to reject the false light tort and to restrict the privacy protections available in this state. First, the court reasons that false light duplicates defamation in several respects and is therefore an unnecessary claim. See maj. op. at 894. Second, the court asserts that the tort might have a chilling effect on First Amendment freedoms. Id.
In my view, these arguments are not persuasive. First, the mere overlap of some false light and defamation elements does not warrant a complete foreclosure of an independent false light claim. A better solution to overlap is simply to preclude duplicative damages awards. Second, false light offers the same First Amendment protections that defamation provides, therefore false light will not chill First Amendment freedoms. Third, today's decision needlessly places Colorado at odds with a clear majority rule, and the application of the majority's analysis to Bue-no's case leads to an unfairly burdensome result.
I. Facts
Eddie Bueno, now in his sixties, left home at age 18 to escape a troubled family. He found work, attended school, and eventually married and raised a family. During those years, Bueno did all he could to separate himself from his brothers and sisters, and had virtually no contact with his parents or siblings. He lived a law abiding life, and was never involved in his siblings' criminal activities.
One can only imagine Eddie Bueno's reaction when he picked up the Rocky Mountain News on Sunday, August 28, 1994, to see the front page, one-inch, bold-print banner headline: "Denver's Biggest Crime Family." The smaller sub-headline read: "15 of 18 Bueno Siblings Have Arrest Records, Including 2 Known as Society Bandits." See Ann Carna-han, Denver's Biggest Crime Family, Rocky Mountain News, Aug. 28, 1994, at 1A. Inside the tabloid newspaper, the Bueno story took four full pages. See id. at 20A-24A. The first page of the article depicted a full-page Bueno family tree, featuring photographs of each of the siblings surrounding the parents' wedding picture. See id. at 20A. Front and center at the top of the tree, directly under the one-inch heading "Denver's Biggest Crime Family," was a photograph of Eddie himself, labeled simply as "EDDIE, 55, the oldest of the Bueno children." Id. The following thirteen-column article provided extensive detail of various criminal activity within the Bueno family, including over twenty-five statements and headings forming the basis of Bueno's lawsuit, among them: "Older Siblings Lure Younger Into Life of Crime." See id. at 22A.
Eddie Bueno sued the newspaper for defamation and for invading his privacy by portraying him in a false light as having the same criminal propensities as his siblings. At trial, the court granted the newspaper's directed verdict on Bueno's defamation claim but allowed the false light claim to go to the jury. The jury returned a verdict in favor of Bueno on the false light claim, awarding him $53,253.90 in economic and non-economic losses, as well as $53,253.00 in exemplary damages. The court of appeals affirmed. Today, the majority opinion invalidates this award by refusing to recognize the viability of false light invasion of privacy in Colorado.
IL Overlap Does Not Justify the Elimination of False Light
First, the court reasons that false light overlaps with defamation in both the interests protected and the conduct averted, and is therefore an unnecessary claim. See maj. op. at 894. Here, I do not agree that the best solution to overlapping torts is the wholesale elimination of one of the claims. The majority opinion begins its analysis by providing a lengthy comparison of the similarities and differences between false light and defamation, rightly finding that the two torts are not exact duplicates. See id. at 898-911. The majority concedes that scenarios exist "where false light arguably fits, but defamation fails," id. at 902, because while false light focuses on publications "highly offensive" to a reasonable person, defamation targets only publications that lower the plaintiff's reputation in the community. See id. at 901. Despite this imperfect fit between false light and defamation, the court nevertheless de*906cides that the two torts are sufficiently similar to justify the elimination of a false light remedy for the leftover "narrow band of cases." See id. at 902.
My main concern with the majority's approach is not with its comparison of false light and defamation, but with its decision to "solve" the overlap by foreclosing the false light tort entirely. In my opinion, a better solution would be to restrict the damages available to plaintiffs raising both false light and defamation claims, thus preventing du-plicative damages awards. The Restatement (Second) of Torts encourages this approach, stating that where more than one privacy claim is based on a single publication, the injured party may "have only one recovery of his damages upon one or all of the different grounds." Restatement (Second) of Torts § 652A emt. d (1977).
Such a solution is not novel-courts are well versed at preventing duplicate awards while simultaneously providing plaintiffs with multiple avenues of relief. For example, a plaintiff with a products liability complaint may choose among several causes of action, including a claim for negligence, strict liability, a breach of express or implied warranty, or a combination of the above. See, e.g., Palmer v. A.H. Robins Co., 684 P.2d 187, 198 (Colo.1984) (involving all of the above actions simultaneously). Therefore, the mere similarity between false light and defamation does not justify the complete rejection of the false light tort. See also Cain v. Hearst Corp., 878 S.W.2d 577, 588 (Tex.1994) (Hightower, J., dissenting) (arguing in a 5-4 dissent that plaintiffs often have a choice between similar claims for relief, and that "ov-eriap, by itself, is no reason to reject a cause of action for false light invasion of privacy").
III. False Light Adequately Protects First Amendment Freedoms
In order to justify the preclusion of claims that fall under only the false light tort, the majority opinion explains that First Amendment concerns outweigh the need to provide an independent false light remedy. See maj. op. at 902-908. At the outset, I disagree with the majority's conclusion that false light is particularly threatening to First Amendment freedoms due to its "subjective component." See id. at 908. The majority attempts to distinguish false light from defamation by noting that "defamation is measured by its results; whereas false light invasion of privacy is measured by perception." Id. at 908. I do not see a meaningful difference between the level of objectivity of these two tests,. In my view, neither standard is easily quantifiable and neither standard can be measured without some consideration of the geographic or temporal context of the statement in question. Therefore, the objective false light standard is no more threatening to First Amendment rights than the objective defamation standard.
Furthermore, the identical "actual malice" standard protects First Amendment freedoms in both defamation and false light cases,1 and this court can easily apply the full range of other constitutional protections afforded to defamation cases to false light invasion of privacy cases. See, e.g., Lerman v. Flynt Distrib. Co., 745 F.2d 123, 135 (2d Cir.1984) (applying the same constitutional protections to both libel and false light cases). Under these constitutional protections, false light does not pose any unusual threat to First Amendment freedoms.
IV. The Majority's Analysis in Rejecting False Light Has Negative Ramifications Both Generally and As Applied to Bueno
A. General Ramifications
I must first emphasize the national context in which today's decision takes place. The majority opinion leaves Colorado at odds with the United States Supreme Court2 and a clear majority of states that recognize the *907false light tort, joining only three states that explicitly reject the tort in its entirety. See Cain, 878 S.W.2d at 579; Lake v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 582 N.W.2d 231, 235-36 (Minn.1998); Renwick v. News & Observer Publ'g. Co., 310 N.C. 312, 312 S.E.2d 405, 413 (1984). We depart from the majority rule despite our recent acknowledgement that we traditionally rely upon majority jurisdictions with respect to invasion of privacy torts. See Dickerson & Assoc. v. Dittmar, 34 P.3d 995, 1001 (Colo.2001). Furthermore, no modern trend explains today's decision-Tennessee, the most recent state before Colorado to consider this debate in light of current cases and commentary, explicitly embraced the majority rule just last year, recognizing false light as a viable and independent tort. West v. Media Gen. Convergence, Inc., 53 S.W.3d 640, 648 (Tenn.2001).
I also note that although the majority opinion claims that its decision reflects "caution with respect to adopting new torts," maj. op. at 903, the decision is more accurately described as one that deprives plaintiffs of a tort that is already, in effect, recognized in this state. While it is true that this court never explicitly adopted false light in the past, we have made consistent references to its existence. See People v. Home Ins. Co., 197 Colo. 260, 263 n. 2, 591 P.2d 1036, 1038 n. 2 (Colo.1979) (referring to the "four distinct kinds of invasion [of privacy]" set forth in the Restatement (2d) of Torts); see also Ozer v. Borquez, 940 P.2d 371, 377 (Colo.1997); Dittemar, 34 P.3d at 1000. Furthermore, in McCammon & Associates, Inc. v. McGraw-Hill Broadcasting Co., 716 P.2d 490, 492 (Colo.App.1986), the court of appeals expressly recognized false light and defined its elements.
Due to the uncritical manner in which both this court and the court of appeals have treated the false light tort over the past twenty years, even the United States District Court for the district of Colorado has been led to conclude that false light is viable under Colorado law. See Brown v. O'Bannon, 84 F.Supp.2d 1176, 1180 (D.Colo.2000); Seidl v. Greentree Mortg. Co., 30 F.Supp.2d 1292, 1802 (D.Colo.1998); Smith v. Colorado Interstate Gas Co., 777 F.Supp. 854, 857 (D.Colo.1991). Clearly, Eddie Bueno and other plaintiffs who have raised false light claims in Colorado have been reasonable in relying on the impression that the false light tort is actionable in this state. Today's decision punishes that reasonable reliance.
B. Ramifications As Applied to Bueno
The majority's analysis reaches an unfairly burdensome result. The trial court directed a verdict against Bueno on his defamation claim 3 but allowed his false light claim to go to the jury. The jury found for Bueno and awarded him $593,253.90 in economic and non-economic losses, as well as $53,258.00 in exemplary damages. In its opinion today, the majority sets aside the verdict and remands the case to the court of appeals to consider Bueno's contention that the trial court erred when it threw out his defamation claim.
The heart of the majority's decision is actually found in a short but extraordinarily significant footnote. See maj. op. at 896 n. 8. In footnote 3, the majority holds, without discussion, that the defamation claim of libel per se "does not include a requirement that the publication be specifically directed at the plaintiff." Id. Conveniently enough, Bueno's original libel per se claim was dismissed by the trial court precisely because the trial judge determined the Rocky Mountain News article was not "specifically directed at" the plaintiff. This single footnote essentially decides Bueno's defamation case today, and yet the majority refuses to explicitly acknowledge this result. Instead, the majority now requires Bueno to go back to the court of appeals and either persuade the court of appeals that footnote 8 is not mere dicta or litigate the issue.
If, as the majority concludes, the tort of false light essentially is the tort of defamation in both the conduct alleged and the interests protected, see id. at 900-906, it should simply order the damages awarded for Bueno's recovery on false light to be paid to him as damages for defamation. The false light jury instructions given in this case were adequate in substance for a defamation *908claim,4 and damages certainly would not be duplicated by upholding Bueno's current award.
The only reason that would justify the majority's remand remedy would be that Bueno's claim is one of those rare instances the majority identifies that would be actionable under false light but not under defamation. If this is true, we should say so. If Bueno's case is in that "narrow band of cases" the majority opinion precludes today, see id. at 902, it is not reasonable to send Eddie Bueno back to the court of appeals or the trial court in search of an illusory goal.
To me, this case is exactly the type of situation that calls out for the protection afforded by the tort of false light invasion of privacy. Bueno was portrayed as something he was not-a criminal-and his efforts to protect his privacy were destroyed. When Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis first proposed the right of privacy,5 they tapped into a concept that has become increasingly more important in succeeding years. Although Warren and Brandeis could not have predicted the seope of today's information explosion and the abuses arising from it, they would immediately recognize what happened to Eddie Bueno. Bueno lost his privacy because a newspaper published a sensational story wrongly including him in the caste of criminals. The court's refusal today to recognize false light not only narrows privacy protections in Colorado and contradicts a national majority rule, but also deprives Eddie Bueno of the rather modest compensation he won and sends him back into more litigation with a vastly better funded foe.
V. Conclusion
Because the majority rejects the tort of false light invasion of privacy without sufficient justification, I cannot agree with the court's decision to eliminate the false light tort. Therefore, I would hold that the court of appeals properly upheld the plaintiff's false light claim.
For the above reasons, I respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to state that Justice MARTINEZ and Justice RICE join in this dissent.

. The majority concedes that "under Colorado law, the requisite mens rea for both defamation and false light would be precisely the same." Maj. op. at 899.

. The U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged the tort of false light invasion of privacy in Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U.S. 374, 87 S.Ct. 534, 17 L.Ed.2d 456 (1967), and Cantrell v. Forest City Publ'g Co., 419 U.S. 245, 249, 95 S.Ct. 465, 42 L.Ed.2d 419 (1974).

. The defamation ruling has not yet been reviewed on appeal.

. The elements of defamation (libel per se and libel per quod) are listed in CJI-Civ.4th 22:1-2, and see CJI-Civ.4th 28:10 for the elements of false light, which were based on the elements detailed in the appellate opinion in this case. See also maj. op. at 899 (providing a comparative chart of the elements for defamation and false light, based on the Colorado Jury Instructions).

. Louis D. Brandeis & Samuel D. Warren, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv. L.Rev. 193 (1890).