Court Opinion

ID: 9746053
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 13:54:25.315986+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:26:16.373681
License: Public Domain

ARONSON, J., Concurring.
I concur in all of the majority’s conclusions, including that plaintiffs have stated a claim for invasion of privacy against Department of the California Highway Patrol (CHP) Dispatcher Aaron Reich and Officer Thomas O’Donnell, for their allegedly unprivileged e-mail distribution of crash scene photographs of Nicole Catsouras’s decapitated body. I write separately because I arrive at this conclusion by a slightly different analysis. As I will explain, I would expressly limit any familial right of privacy in death images to photographs taken during an autopsy or for the coroner at a cordoned-off accident scene, and which serve no newsworthy public interest. Circumscribed by these limitations, plaintiffs’ invasion of privacy claim fits squarely within the contours of California privacy law. Accordingly, I also concur with the majority that plaintiffs have stated a negligence cause of action. Although neither of the individual defendants nor the CHP undertook a duty of care with respect to plaintiffs, and none of the defendants had a special relationship with plaintiffs, California privacy law imposed duties on defendants to avoid intrusion into plaintiffs’ privacy right in the photographs or, stated differently, to avoid publicizing private facts concerning them. (See Marlene F. v. Affiliated Psychiatric Medical Clinic, Inc. (1989) 48 Cal.3d 583, 590 [257 Cal.Rptr. 98, 770 P.2d 278] [duty element of negligence claim must be one “assumed by the defendant or imposed on the defendant as a matter of law, or that arises out of a relationship between the two” (italics added)].)
While precedent supports a state law cause of action by close family members for invasion of privacy in the circumstances here, I agree with the majority that locating such a right within the four comers of the federal Constitution is a novel proposition, not clearly established at the time of the officers’ actions. I am dubious any such right exists. The Fourteenth Amendment, for example, is not a “font of tort law to be superimposed upon whatever systems may already be administered by the States.” (Paul v. Davis (1976) 424 U.S. 693, 697, 701 [47 L.Ed.2d 405, 96 S.Ct. 1155] [holding plaintiff could not bring 42 U.S.C. § 1983 action against police chief for distributing flyer with plaintiff’s name and photograph, captioned “Active Shoplifters”].)
*899A. General Observations
I agree with the majority that the allegations of plaintiffs’ complaint are so unusual in the nature of defendants’ alleged acts that prior California cases concerning “relational” privacy are inapposite. (See Metter v. Los Angeles Examiner (1939) 35 Cal.App.2d 304, 311 [95 P.2d 491] (Metier) [characterizing relational privacy right as “a right to be spared unhappiness through publicity concerning another person because of one’s relationship to such person”].) True, those cases establish there is no general right to a fond memory of the dead, unsullied by distressing or defamatory allegations about the deceased. (See, e.g., Flynn v. Higham (1983) 149 Cal.App.3d 677, 679, 681-683 [197 Cal.Rptr. 145] (Flynn) [writings claiming actor Errol Flynn was “a homosexual and a Nazi spy” insufficient for his daughters to state claims for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, or invasion of privacy].)
Nor, as other courts have explained, are survivors entitled to elevate their view of the departed over all others, thereby preventing the public from entertaining a different recollection. (See, e.g., Schuyler v. Curtis (1895) 147 N.Y. 434, 447 [42 N.E. 22] (Schuyler) [relatives unsympathetic to women’s movement could not enjoin display of statue of their decedent commissioned by activists].) As the majority explains, the public may have a legitimate interest in facts about the deceased, despite the pain publication of those facts may bring to survivors. (Maj. opn. ante, at p. 874; see, e.g., Metter, supra, 35 Cal.App.2d at p. 312 [plaintiff’s wife “ended her life by plunging from [a] high building. It would be difficult to imagine a more public method of self-destruction. For a brief period and in the pitiful and tragic circumstances attending her demise she became an object of public interest.”].)
The privacy interest alleged here, however, is different in kind from the derivative interests asserted in earlier cases. The close connection between defendants’ acts and the bodily remains that the survivors must inter makes this case unique. Metter, for example, is distinguishable because the defendant newspaper published a photograph of the decedent taken during her life, not her remains. (See Metter, supra, 35 Cal.App.2d at pp. 306-307.)
Here, central to the trial court’s ruling was its conclusion the officers published no private facts about plaintiffs, but rather only about the decedent. In sustaining defendants’ demurrers, the trial court relied upon the rule of law that the right of privacy “does not survive but dies with the person.” (Flynn, supra, 149 Cal.App.3d at p. 683.) The trial court correctly concluded the details revealed in the crash scene photographs pertained to decedent because they depicted her remains. Accordingly, plaintiffs could not vicariously assert the decedent’s privacy interests.
*900But that does not end the analysis. As explained below, plaintiffs have adequately pleaded their own personal causes of action arising from the tortious dissemination of death scene or autopsy photographs in the circumstances here. Rather than asserting vicarious rights through the decedent, plaintiffs bring their own claims that survive demurrer within the limitations inherent in privacy law.
B. Governing Law
Protection of privacy through the mechanism of tort law is well established in California. In Shulman v. Group W Productions, Inc. (1998) 18 Cal.4th 200, 231 [74 Cal.Rptr.2d 843, 955 P.2d 469] (Shulman), the Supreme Court explained that, “[influenced by Dean Prosser’s analysis of the tort actions for invasion of privacy (Prosser, Privacy (1960) 48 Cal.L.Rev. 381) and the exposition of a similar analysis in the Restatement Second of Torts sections 652A-652E . . . , California courts have recognized both . . . intrusion into private places, conversations or other matters” and “public disclosure of private facts” as valid causes of action.1 (Shulman, supra, 18 Cal.4th at p. 214.) In my view, the allegations of plaintiffs’ complaint fit squarely within the elements of both of these torts.
(1) Intrusion
In Shulman, the high court noted that, “[o]f the four privacy torts identified by Prosser, the tort of intrusion into private places, conversations or matter is perhaps the one that best captures the common understanding of an ‘invasion of privacy,’ ” and observed, “It is in the intrusion cases that invasion of privacy is most clearly seen as an affront to individual dignity.” {Shulman, supra, 18 Cal.4th at pp. 230-231.)
As defined by the Supreme Court, “intrusion has two elements: (1) intrusion into a private place, conversation or matter, (2) in a manner highly offensive to a reasonable person.” (Shulman, supra, 18 Cal.4th at p. 231; see Miller v. National Broadcasting Co. (1986) 187 Cal.App.3d 1463, 1482 [232 Cal.Rptr. 668] (Miller)-, Rest.2d Torts, § 652B [“One who intentionally intrudes, physically or otherwise, upon the solitude or seclusion of another or his private affairs or concerns, is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy, if the intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.”].) The intrusion tort is available where “the plaintiff had an objectively reasonable expectation of seclusion or solitude in the place, conversation or data source.” (Shulman, at p. 232, italics added; see Rest.2d Torts, § 652B, com. c, p. 379.)
*901California law expressly provides, with limited exceptions and “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law,” that “no copy, reproduction, or facsimile of any kind shall be made of any photograph ... of the body, or any portion of the body, of a deceased person, taken by or for the coroner at the scene of death or in the course of a post mortem examination or autopsy made by or caused to be made by the coroner . . . .” (Code Civ. Proc., § 129,2 italics added; all further undesignated statutory references are to this code.) Plaintiffs’ complaint alleged defendants Reich and O’Donnell e-mailed accident scene photographs of Nicole Catsouras’s decapitated remains to numerous acquaintances. The nature of an e-mail transmission, particularly to multiple recipients, necessarily involves electronic copying of the images transmitted.
The allegations of plaintiffs’ complaint reveal the accident that took Nicole Catsouras’s life was exceedingly violent, sudden, and unusual because it involved sufficient force to decapitate her. Accordingly, as defendants point out, the coroner was entitled to inquire into the death. (Gov. Code, § 27491 [“It shall be the duty of the coroner to inquire into and determine the circumstances, manner, and cause of all violent, sudden or unusual deaths . . . .”].) Defendants’ reliance on this code provision suggests that one of the reasons CHP officers took numerous photographs of decedent’s remains was to facilitate any ensuing investigation by the coroner. The photographs, while they might also have had other law enforcement purposes such as determining whether traffic laws had been violated in the accident, appear to fall within section 129’s prohibition on copying, unless an exception applies. Nothing suggests, however, that Reich’s or O’Donnell’s copying of the photographs in their e-mail transmissions to acquaintances served any law enforcement, medical or scientific purpose, or that they transmitted the images for use in a criminal action or proceeding relating to Catsouras’s death, or pursuant to a court order. (See § 129.)
*902True, plaintiffs cited section 129 nowhere in their complaint. But they adequately invoked legal protection of their privacy expectations by alleging defendants transmitted the images “to members of the general public who were not authorized and/or ever involved in any aspect of any official investigation of the October 31, 2006 vehicular collision.” (See Shulman, supra, 18 Cal.4th at p. 235, fn. 16 [although plaintiff did not invoke Pen. Code, § 632, her claim defendant illegally recorded her conversation “is comprehended in the complaint’s claim of intrusion and the substantive law relating to that claim”].)
The cloak of privacy that section 129 drapes around autopsy or death scene photographs in the situation here distinguishes Miller, where the appellate court concluded the decedent’s daughter failed to state a cause of action for intrusion on her seclusion. The court reasoned that the decedent’s wife had a reasonable expectation of privacy in her own home when, without her consent, a news crew filmed paramedics’ efforts to revive her husband, but the adult daughter who no longer lived in the home did not. (Miller, supra, 187 Cal.App.3d at pp. 1484—1487, 1489.) Additionally, as the majority notes, it is not clear the wife’s husband was dead in any of the broadcast images.
Here, in contrast, the images the officers transmitted to their acquaintances revealed without question that Catsouras was dead and, consistent with the terms of section 129, plaintiffs held an objectively reasonable expectation that the photographs would remain a nonpublic “data source” (Shulman, supra, 18 Cal.4th at p. 232) that CHP personnel would not transmit to others. In essence, defendants’ transmission of the photographs constituted an intrusion into a matter—the photographs themselves—that plaintiffs could reasonably expect would remain undisclosed, closeted within the narrow exceptions defined by section 129. Those exceptions meant, of course, no absolute or complete privacy interest in the photographs for the decedent’s survivors, and if plaintiffs held any such subjective expectation (there is no indication they did), it was not controlling. But as our Supreme Court has explained, “[Pjrivacy, for purposes of the intrusion tort, is not a binary, all-or-nothing characteristic. There are degrees and nuances to societal recognition of our expectations of privacy: the fact that the privacy one expects in a given setting is not complete or absolute does not render the expectation unreasonable as a matter of law.” (Sanders v. American Broadcasting Companies (1999) 20 Cal.4th 907, 916 [85 Cal.Rptr.2d 909, 978 P.2d 67].)
Contrary to the trial court’s conclusion, the details about decedent’s corpse revealed in the accident scene photographs did not pertain solely to decedent or to privacy interests that expired with her. Details concerning a corpse are unlike private facts of any other kind because of the survivors’ responsibility to inter the decedent’s body. Society recognizes the emotional and familial *903bonds underpinning survivors’ direct interest in their deceased’s body by conferring on them the right and obligation to dispose of the body. (Health & Saf. Code, § 7100.) The law recognizes and protects the survivors’ interest in ensuring dignified treatment of their decedent’s remains. (See, e.g., Health & Saf. Code, §§ 7050.5 [prohibiting desecration of buried human remains], 7051 [preventing unlawful disinterment or disturbance of human remains], 8115 [providing that local standards governing interment ensure, inter alia, “decent and respectful treatment of human remains”]; Pen. Code, § 594.35 [imposing felony punishment for interference with persons engaged in funeral services or interring human remains]; see Christensen v. Superior Court (1991) 54 Cal.3d 868, 896-898 [2 Cal.Rptr.2d 79, 820 P.2d 181] (Christensen).)
This interest in protecting the dignity of the corpse extends beyond the dispositional rights holders to these plaintiffs, who are the decedent’s close family members. (Cf. Christensen, supra, 54 Cal.3d at p. 896; Quesada v. Oak Hill Improvement Co. (1989) 213 Cal.App.3d 596, 599 [261 Cal.Rptr. 769].) And this interest bears close relation to a similarly basic interest in human dignity that underlies privacy law. (See Shulman, supra, 18 Cal.4th at p. 231 [a “ ‘measure of personal isolation and personal control over the conditions of its abandonment is of the very essence of personal freedom and dignity, [and] is part of what our culture means by these concepts’ ”].)
Here, as discussed, plaintiffs’ complaint adequately alleged, within the confines of section 129 and for purposes of demurrer, an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy. And defendants’ alleged transmission of the photographs to acquaintances, merely for shock value, satisfies the tort’s second prong, namely, intrusion in a manner highly offensive to a reasonable person. I conclude plaintiffs have stated a cause of action for intrusion into private matters.
(2) Publication of Private Facts
The elements of the tort of public disclosure of private facts include: “ ‘(1) public disclosure (2) of a private fact (3) which would be offensive and objectionable to the reasonable person and (4) which is not of legitimate public concern.’ ” (Shulman, supra, 18 Cal.4th at p. 214; see Rest.2d Torts, § 652D [“One who gives publicity to a matter concerning the private life of another is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy, if the matter publicized is of a kind that [f] (a) would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and [][] (b) is not of legitimate concern to the public.”].) In Shulman, the Supreme Court held that “lack of newsworthiness is an element of the ‘private facts’ tort, making newsworthiness a complete bar to common law liability.” (Shulman, at pp. 214-215.)
*904Plaintiffs’ allegations are sufficient to satisfy each of these elements. First, plaintiffs’ complaint alleged Reich and O’Donnell disclosed the death scene photographs of Catsouras “to members of the general public . . . .” The complaint alleged the distribution was sufficiently widespread that, within a year, Web sites all over the world displayed the images, including 2,500 sites identified in the United States and other English-speaking countries such as Great Britain.
The Restatement Second of Torts defines the public disclosure element as communication to the “public at large, or to so many persons that the matter must be regarded as substantially certain to become one of public knowledge,” noting “it is not an invasion ... to communicate a fact concerning the plaintiff’s private life to a single person or even to a small group of persons.” (Rest.2d Torts, § 652D, com. a, p. 384; see generally Elder, Privacy Torts (2002) § 3:3, pp. 3-16 to 3-21 [criticizing stringent application of Restatement standard].) In Kinsey v. Macur (1980) 107 Cal.App.3d 265, 270 [165 Cal.Rptr. 608], the court concluded “the tort must be accompanied by publicity in the sense of communication to the public in general or to a large number of persons as distinguished from one individual or a few.” Kinsey held a jilted lover’s act of mailing letters to “ ‘perhaps twenty [people] at most’ ” to “ ‘tell the whole world what a bastard [plaintiff] is’ ” constituted the requisite publicity. (Id. at pp. 271-272.) Plaintiffs did not specify any number of persons to whom Reich or O’Donnell directly e-mailed the photographs. But the medium in which defendant chose to make the disclosure is important, since e-mail is so susceptible to easy and thoughtless forwarding to a larger audience. Given the medium the officers selected and the likelihood acquaintances they chose would, like the officers, prove unable to resist an impulse to forward the photographs, plaintiffs’ allegation that defendants publicized the photographs to “members of the general public” is sufficient to survive demurrer, even under a standard requiring disclosure substantially certain to become public knowledge.
Second, the facts revealed in the death scene photographs of Catsouras’s decapitated remains were private as to these plaintiffs in several respects. They were private because, as discussed, section 129 prohibited public dissemination of the photographs, supporting an objectively reasonable expectation of family members the photographs would not become the subject of electronic gawking. Plaintiffs and defendants disputed in the pleadings whether plaintiffs had a property right in the photographs or other depictions of their decedent’s body, but property law does not always define privacy’s bounds. (See Shulman, supra, 18 Cal.4th at p. 232.) Rather, the question is one of objectively reasonable or unreasonable expectations. (Id. at pp. 232-234 [reversing summary judgment where triable issues existed on plaintiff’s expectation of privacy in conversations with airlift medic].) Section *905129 supports the conclusion plaintiffs held an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the circumstances here. (Cf. Shulman, at p. 235 [plaintiff’s “claim, of course, does not require her to prove a statutory violation, only to prove that she had an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy”].)
The facts revealed in the photographs were also private because, as discussed above, survivors have a privacy interest in the body—and in facts about the body—that they must inter. Crucially, the photographs disseminated by Reich and O’Donnell revealed intimate, gruesome facts about Catsouras’s lifeless body that were not public knowledge. The “[p]laintiff in a public disclosure case has the burden of proving as a ‘threshold’ requirement . . . that the ‘facts exposed were kept hidden from the public eye.’ In other words, [the] plaintiff has no ‘objectively reasonable expectation of privacy’ in matters in the ‘public domain’ and [the] defendant is ‘subject to no liability for giving further publicity to what the plaintiff himself leaves open to the public eye.’ ” (Elder, Privacy Torts, supra, § 3:5, pp. 3-43 to 3-45, fns. omitted; see Sipple v. Chronicle Publishing Co. (1984) 154 Cal.App.3d 1040, 1047 [201 Cal.Rptr. 665] (Sipple) [“a crucial ingredient of the tort premised upon invasion of one’s privacy is a public disclosure of private facts [citations], that is, the unwarranted publication of intimate details of one’s private life which are outside the realm of legitimate public interest. . .”].)
Jurisdictions addressing the issue have found a familial right of privacy in autopsy photographs. “Courts that have found an invasion of privacy have done so when the case involves death-scene images such as crime scene or autopsy photographs.” (Calvert, Support Our [Dead] Troops: Sacrificing Political Expression Rights for Familial Control over Names and Likenesses (2008) 16 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 1169, 1181; see Reid v. Pierce County (1998) 136 Wn.2d 195 [961 P.2d 333, 342] [family members stated invasion of privacy cause of action where defendants displayed, in handmade scrapbooks circulated at a cocktail party, decedents’ autopsy photographs]; Adams v. King County (2008) 164 Wn.2d 640 [192 P.3d 891, 902] [mother had privacy interest in deceased son’s autopsy records, but no actual disclosure occurred]; Katz v. National Archives & Records Admin. (D.D.C. 1994) 862 F.Supp. 476, 485-186, affd. (D.C. Cir. 1995) 68 F.3d 1438 [access to autopsy photographs of John Fitzgerald Kennedy would be a “clearly unwarranted” invasion of family’s privacy]; Badhwar v. U.S. Dept, of Air Force (D.C. Cir. 1987) 829 F.2d 182, 185-186 [families of deceased pilots had protectable privacy interest in autopsy reports]; cf. Loft v. Fuller (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 1981) 408 So.2d 619, 624-625 [refusing to adopt “blanket rule” prohibiting relational privacy claims, recognizing in dicta “sufficiently egregious” claims, such as “display[ing] grotesque pictures of the deceased’s body,” but finding standard not met there in defendant’s reports of decedent’s reappearance as a ghost].) The majority ably demonstrates the high court has *906recognized a familial right of privacy in death scene photographs based on a long-standing common law and cultural traditions respecting family interests.3 (National Archives and Records Admin, v. Favish (2004) 541 U.S. 157 [158 L.Ed.2d 319, 124 S.Ct. 1570].) There is scant contrary authority directly on point.4
Third, on these facts it hardly needs stating plaintiffs met their pleading burden to show defendants’ publication of the private facts contained in the photographs would be offensive and objectionable to a person of ordinary sensibilities. “[Determining offensiveness requires consideration of all the circumstances of the intrusion, including its degree and setting and the intruder’s ‘motives and objectives.’ ” (Shulman, supra, 18 Cal.4th at p. 236.) At this pleading stage, plaintiffs have satisfied the third element of the public disclosure tort: a reasonable person would find defendants’ disclosure of these photographs to be offensive and objectionable.
Fourth, plaintiffs’ complaint satisfied their initial pleading burden to demonstrate the absence of any legitimate public concern or newsworthiness in the exposure of graphic and private details published by the defendants. Legitimate public concern and newsworthiness do not comprise separate elements, but rather are interrelated and involve assessing “the social value of the published facts . . . .” (M. G. v. Time Warner, Inc. (2001) 89 Cal.App.4th 623, 631 [107 Cal.Rptr.2d 504].)
Here, it is true decedent’s decapitation was public knowledge as a result of news reports and, moreover, this fact was newsworthy to illustrate the severity of an automobile accident occurring on a public highway. (See Sipple, supra, 154 Cal.App.3d at p. 1047 [“there can be no privacy with respect to a matter which is already public [citation] or which has previously become part *907of the ‘public domain . . .’”].) That an accident occurs on a public highway, however, does not make every detail connected to the accident “public” or of overriding public interest. (Shulman, supra, 18 Cal.4th at pp. 233-234.) Plaintiffs’ allegation in the complaint that CHP officers “cordoned off the area, and took control and custody of the area of the traffic collision and everything within it, including the remains of Decedent,” while also excluding others, including decedent’s father, is sufficient on demurrer to withstand defendants’ claim that “decedent’s remains . . . were on a public highway in public view." (Italics added.) (See Shulman, at p. 233, fn. 13 [no record evidence supported assertion a “ ‘crowd of onlookers peer[ed] down at the rescue scene . . .’”].)
Moreover, contrary to defendants’ argument that general public knowledge of the decapitation thwarts plaintiffs’ claims, certain graphic facts revealed in the photographs had not been made public and defendants identify no legitimate public interest in those facts. Specifically, for example, the expression frozen on the decedent’s face following her death, the exact location and position in relation to each other in which the different parts of decedent’s remains came to rest, and the gore of her particular wounds revealed in detail by the photographs were neither in the public domain, nor served any public purpose.
There appears to be no social value in the defendants’ allegedly unprivileged dissemination of the accident scene photographs and the private facts those photographs revealed. The lack of newsworthiness in these particular facts distinguishes defendants’ contention that allowing plaintiffs’ claims to proceed past the demurrer stage would chill publication of historically newsworthy photographs, such as Civil War battleground photographs and pictures of other war dead. To the contrary, for demurrer purposes, plaintiffs have established the absence of any legitimate public interest in the details the officers revealed in the photographs. Consequently, I agree with the majority that plaintiffs have stated a-cause of action for invasion of their privacy by publication of private facts.
C. Conclusion
The essence of privacy law is that it guards objectively reasonable expectations of privacy society recognizes as legitimate. While until today no California case had yet recognized a familial right to privacy in autopsy or similar photographs, I conclude it is no great leap to do so. Significantly, California law already expressly provides, with limited exceptions and “[njotwithstanding any other provision of law,” that “no copy, reproduction, or facsimile of any kind shall be made of any photograph ... of the body, or any portion of the body, of a deceased person, taken by or for the coroner at *908the scene of death or in the course of a post mortem examination or autopsy made by or caused to be made by the coroner . . . .” (§ 129, italics added.) The interests protected by this provision naturally include the survivors’ privacy interest in preventing dissemination of gruesome autopsy and death scene photographs of their loved one. As detailed above, within the constraints of section 129 and subject to the competing interests balanced by the principles of California privacy law, I conclude plaintiffs have stated a cause of action for invasion of their own privacy, not their decedent’s. (See, e.g., Schuyler, supra, 147 N.Y. at p. 447 [“it is the right of the living and not the dead is recognized”].)
A petition for a rehearing was denied March 1, 2010, and the opinion was modified to read as printed above. The petition of respondents Aaron Reich and Thomas O’Donnell for review by the Supreme Court was denied April 14, 2010, SI80881. George, C. J., did not participate therein.

 “The two other ‘Prosser torts’ are presentation of the plaintiff to the public in a false light and appropriation of image or personality.” (Shulman, supra, 18 Cal.4th at p. 214, fn. 4.)

 In full, section 129 provides: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no copy, reproduction, or facsimile of any kind shall be made of any photograph, negative, or print, including instant photographs and video recordings, of the body, or any portion of the body, of a deceased person, taken by or for the coroner at the scene of death or in the course of a post mortem examination or autopsy made by or caused to be made by the coroner, except for use in a criminal action or proceeding in this state that relates to the death of that person, or except as a court of this state permits, by order after good cause has been shown and after written notification of the request for the court order has been served, at least five days before the order is made, upon the district attorney of the county in which the post mortem examination or autopsy has been made or caused to be made. [10 This section shall not apply to the making of such a copy, reproduction, or facsimile for use in the field of forensic pathology, for use in medical or scientific education or research, or for use by any law enforcement agency in this or any other state or the United States. ['][] This section shall apply to any such copy, reproduction, or facsimile, and to any such photograph, negative, or print, heretofore or hereafter made.”

 And as Aeschylus memorably demonstrated, Antigone’s motivation to bury her brother’s body arose from her emotional ties and her sense of familial obligation, loyalty and affection-bonds that are recognized by all civilized societies.

 Waters v. Fleetwood (1956) 212 Ga. 161 [91 S.E.2d 344], acknowledged by the majority as contrary precedent for a relational right of privacy in death images, is distinguishable for three reasons. First, it did not involve autopsy photographs or death scene photographs taken for a coroner’s investigation; second, press photographers were not excluded by police from the scene where the child murder victim’s remains were removed from a river; and third, the state of the victim’s remains, including the chains about her decomposed body, may have been newsworthy in illustrating the manner and time of the killing, of legitimate interest to the public. (But see State v. Rolling (Fla.Cir.Ct. 1994) 22 Media L.Rep. 2264 [1994 WL 722891] [trial court balanced public interest in Gainesville murders with family privacy interests by allowing public to view photographs at courthouse, but prohibiting their removal or publication]; Campus Communications, Inc. v. Earnhardt (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 2002) 821 So.2d 388 [court allowed parties interested in ensuring race car safety to inspect autopsy photographs of deceased driver, but prevented release or publication of photos to protect family privacy].) None of the factors distinguishing Waters are present here to thwart the protection of California privacy law.