A California state appeals court has released its opinion in M.G. v. Time Warner, a case involving privacy rights and a state SLAPP law. In the course of covering a story involving adult coaches sexually abusing youngsters, Sports Illustrated and HBO ran photographs of a Little League team. The team's manager had plead guilty to molesting five children in the league. Members of the team -- 10 players and coaches -- sued Time Warner on the usual grounds of invasion of privacy and emotional harm. Time Warner said this was a SLAPP suit designed to inhibit free speech. The trial court disagreed with Time Warner, and now the appeals court has too, so the case continues. The appeals court said that a leading Supreme Court case does not apply since the people in the photographs were minors. (Florida Star v. B.J.F., 491 U.S. 524 (1989), The First Amendment prohibits imposition of liability for publication of rape victim's name that was legally obtained from a police report) The decision is here: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/E027632.PDF -Declan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe, visit http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Jun 01 2001 - 07:48:37 PDT