Opinion
No. CV 02 0562799
July 25, 2005
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION RE SUMMARY JUDGMENT ON INMATE'S CLAIM THAT TV BROADCAST INVADED HER PRIVACY
On January 2, 2003, plaintiff Carolyn Adams filed a two-count amended complaint against the defendant, Lin Television Corp., alleging, in count one invasion of privacy, and in count two intentional infliction of emotional distress. This memorandum of decision addresses count one only.
The plaintiff alleges in count one that on January 10, 1999, the defendant, through its agent Peter Standring, a news reporter for the television station, WTNH (Channel 8), which is wholly owned by the defendant, broadcast throughout Connecticut a picture of the plaintiff's face, identified the plaintiff by name and stated that the plaintiff had serious mental health problems. The plaintiff alleges that she did not authorize the release of her picture, name or mental health status. The plaintiff further alleges that the disclosure of her picture, name and mental health status were highly offensive to her and has caused her great emotional harm and ridicule. In addition, the plaintiff alleges that said disclosure would have been highly offensive to a reasonable person, and that the disclosures were not of legitimate concern to the public. At all relevant times, the plaintiff was an inmate at the York Correctional Institute in East Lyme, Connecticut.
On February 10, 2005, the defendant filed a motion for summary judgment, with accompanying memorandum of law in support, attacking count one of the plaintiff's complaint on the ground that" [t]he plaintiff's claim for invasion of privacy fails as a matter of law because the private facts concerning her mental health status . . . were already part of the public record disclosed at the plaintiff's criminal court appearances." Moreover, the defendant avers in his motion that there are no material facts in dispute.
The plaintiff has not submitted an objection or memorandum of law in opposition to the defendant's motion for summary judgment. The defendant has attached an affidavit and exhibits to its memorandum of law in support of its motion. This motion for summary judgment is now before the court.
Standard for deciding Motion for Summary Judgment
Practice Book § 17-49 "provides that summary judgment shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, affidavits and any other proof submitted show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law . . . In deciding a motion for summary judgment, the trial court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving . . . The party seeking summary judgment has the burden of showing the absence of any genuine issue [of] material facts which, under applicable principles of substantive law, entitle him to a judgment as a mailer of law . . . and the party opposing such a motion must provide an evidentiary foundation to demonstrate the existence of a genuine issue of material fact." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Barrett v. Montesano, 269 Conn. 787, 791-92, 849 A.2d 839 (2004). "The existence of the genuine issue of material fact must be demonstrated by counter affidavits and concrete evidence . . . If the affidavits and the other supporting documents [submitted by the non-movant] are inadequate, then the court is justified in granting the summary judgment assuming that the movant has met his burden of proof." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) DeCorso v. Watchtower Bible Tract Society of New York Inc., 78 Conn.App. 865, 871, 829 A.2d 38, cert. denied, 266 Conn. 931, 837 A.2d 805 (2003). "When a party moves for summary judgment and there [are] no contradictory affidavits, the court properly [decides] the motion by looking only to the sufficiency of the [movant's] affidavits and other proof." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Morrissey v. Jesmac Distributors, Inc., Superior Court, judicial district of New London at Norwich, Docket No. 111986 (November 12, 1998, Mihalakos, J.), quoting Heyman Associates No. 1 v. Insurance Co. of Pennsylvania, 231 Conn. 756, 653 A.2d 122 (1995).
In the present case, the plaintiff has not submitted any opposition to the defendant's motion for summary judgment; therefore, the court may look only to the defendant's affidavits and proof to determine if the defendant has met its burden of proof The defendant has submitted with its memorandum of law in support, an affidavit by attorney Elias A. Alexiades who swears that the attached exhibits of court transcripts are true and correct. The transcripts are of the plaintiff's criminal court appearances held on October 28, 1997, May 4, 1998, and July 27, 1998. As the defendant argues, and as the transcripts provide, the plaintiff's mental condition was discussed in open court and has become part of the plaintiff's public judicial record. See Sabanosh v. Durant, Superior Court, judicial district of Ansonia-Milford at Milford, Docket No. CV 96054525 (December 17, 1997, Flynn, J.) ( 21 Conn. L. Rptr. 213, 214) ("In criminal and civil cases, the public has a right to view court documents and court proceedings.") (Internal quotation marks omitted.); Practice Book §§ 42-49 and 11-20.
In the defendant's exhibit A, a transcript reflecting the hearing before the Honorable Sambino Tamborra, J.T.R., dated October 28, 1997, there are several passages pertaining to the mental health of the plaintiff. For example, on page three, Mr. Jones requests from the court a medical and suicide watch for the plaintiff. On page four, Mr. O'Regan discusses an apparent medical or mental health problem afflicting the plaintiff. On page six, the court orders a suicide watch for the plaintiff.
In the defendant's exhibit B, a transcript reflecting the hearing before the Honorable Thomas P. Miano, dated May 4, 1998, there are also several passages pertaining to the mental health of the plaintiff, where the plaintiff herself discussed taking medications for her mental conditions. For example, on page ten, the plaintiff stated to the court that she was on psychiatric medications. The plaintiff stated that one medication is an anti-psychotic drug and the other is to treat major depression.
In defendant's exhibit C, a transcript reflecting the sentencing hearing before Honorable Thomas P. Miano, dated July 27, 1998, the plaintiff's husband stated to the court that the plaintiff was in need of psychiatric services. On page five, the plaintiff's husband stated that when he first met the plaintiff, she did not have the psychiatric services needed to keep her stable in the community. The plaintiff's husband further related that he had admitted the plaintiff to good psychiatric services, and that the plaintiff was taking appropriate medications. On pages ten through twelve, the court acknowledged that the plaintiff had been treated as an outpatient by a psychiatrist or doctor for eight years. After sentencing the plaintiff to a term of five years of incarceration for larceny, among other things, the court ordered a medical watch for the plaintiff because there had been reference to her making attempts to harm herself.
"In Goodrich v. Waterbury Republican-American, Inc., 188 Conn. 107, 126-28, 448 A.2d 1317 (1982), the Supreme Court established a cause of action for invasion of privacy and adopted the four categories as defined in § 652A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts. The four categories are: (a) unreasonable. intrusion upon the seclusion of another; (b) appropriation of the other's name or likeness; (c) unreasonable publicity given to the other's private life; or (d) publicity that unseasonably places the other in a false light before the public. The court explained these four categories to have not developed as a single tort, but as a complex of four distinct kinds of invasions of four different interests of the plaintiff, which are tied together by the common name, but otherwise have almost nothing in common except that each represents an interference with the right of the plaintiff to be let alone." (Citations omitted. Evans v. Blanchard, Superior Court, judicial district of Waterbury, Docket No. CV 03 0177251 (January 11, 2005, Matasavage, J.) ( 38 Conn. L. Rptr. 547, 548).
In the present case, the plaintiff has alleged a claim for invasion of privacy by unreasonable publicity given to the plaintiff's private life. "In Perkins v. Freedom of Information Commission. 228 Conn. 158, 635 A.2d 783 (1993), the Connecticut Supreme Court approved the definition in the Restatement of a cause of action for giving unreasonable publicity to another's private life." Daconto v. Trumbull Housing Authority, Superior Court, judicial district of Fairfield at Bridgeport, Docket No. CV 03 0399811 (January 30, 2004, Doherty, J.). Section 652D of the Restatement (Second) of Torts, entitled, Publicity Given to Private Life, provides: "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 a kind that[:] (a) would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and (b) is not of legitimate concern to the public." 3 Restatement (Second), Torts, Invasion of Privacy § 652D, p. 383 (1977). However, comment f to 3 Restatement (Second), Torts, § 652D states: "Those who commit crime or are accused of it . . . are . . . persons of public interest, concerning whom the public is entitled to be informed. These persons are regarded as properly subject to the public interest, and publishers are permitted to satisfy the curiosity of the public as to its heroes, leaders, villains and victims, and those who are closely associated with them."
In Travers v. Paton, 261 F.Sup. 110 (D.Conn. 1966), the plaintiff, an inmate in Connecticut's Somers prison, filed a law suit against the defendant media corporation that broadcast a television documentary in which the plaintiff was secretly filmed during a parole hearing. The plaintiff claimed that his constitutional right to privacy under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 was violated by the defendant's deceptive filming of the plaintiff in his parole hearing. Finding that the plaintiff had no claim under a federal constitutional right to privacy, the court invoked its pendent jurisdiction and reviewed the plaintiff's claim under Connecticut's common-law right of action for the invasion of privacy. The court then found that "[e]ven if the facts might be held to constitute and invasion of the privacy of a full-fledged citizen, an average member of the community, no actionable invasion occurs if the subject of such publicity is a prisoner. A prisoner becomes a public figure by virtue of his crime and subsequent trial . . . He remains a public figure during his imprisonment or until he has reverted to the lawful and unexciting life led by the great bulk of the community." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 117. The court found that the plaintiff had no claim for invasion of privacy.
In McNally v. Pulitzer Publishing Co., 532 F.2d 69 (8th Cir. 1976), the plaintiff, an inmate at Leavenworth federal penitentiary, sued The defendant publishing company for publishing an article quoting several passages from a psychiatric report concerning an evaluation of his mental status and competency. At a pretrial hearing, the trial judge had read portions of the report into the record. The plaintiff alleged that the defendant published portions of the report that were not read into the record by the trial court. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals found that "the interests in privacy fade when the information involved already appears on the public record . . . Public records by their very nature are of interest to those concerned with the administration of government, and a public benefit is performed by the reporting of the true contents of the records by the media. The freedom of the press to publish that information appears to us to be of critical importance to our type of government in which the citizenry is the final judge of the proper conduct of public business. In preserving that form of government the First and Fourteenth Amendments command nothing less than that the States may not impose sanctions for the publication of truthful information contained in official court records open to public inspection." (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 77-78. The Eighth Circuit found that the facts indicated that "substantial information regarding [the plaintiff's] mental competency was a matter of public record and that the newspaper article contained little if anything not generally disclosed in open court." Id. Furthermore, the court ruled that because the information in the article was of a public nature, the publication did not give rise to any claim for invasion of a constitutional right to privacy. Id., 77.
In the present case, the defendant has presented an affidavit and evidence showing that the plaintiff's mental health status was discussed in open court and had become part of the plaintiff's judicial record. In addition, the plaintiff, at all relevant times, was an inmate during the period in which the defendant allegedly broadcast the report at issue. As discussed above, the plaintiff as an inmate in a prison was a public figure by virtue of her crimes and court proceedings, and remained a public figure during the course of her imprisonment. Furthermore, the defendant's broadcast stated that the plaintiff had serious mental health problems, and quoted the plaintiff's husband as saying that she needed medication and regular counseling and that she was not getting the level of psychiatric services she needed. These statements are substantially similar to the statements made in open court during the plaintiff's court proceedings.
Conclusion
In light of holdings in Travers v. Paton, supra and McNally v. Pulitzer Publishing Co., supra, as well as the evidence provided by the defendant, and not provided by the plaintiff, the court finds that the defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment should be and hereby is granted.
Clarance J. Jones, Judge