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No Rest for the Dead - The Right of Privacy

In my last column, I discussed the case of a teacher who sued his school district for slander and invasion of privacy because it investigated charges of misconduct which were supposedly untrue. In that case, the teacher’s suit for slander was thrown out of court, but he was allowed to have a jury trial on his claim that his right to privacy had been violated.

The case which established his right to sue for an invasion of privacy was decided less than a year ago, and is one of the most bizarre cases I have ever read.

The relatives of several deceased persons sued Pierce County, claiming that the employees of the County coroner (Medical Examiner) had taken autopsy photos of their relatives’ corpses, had shown them off at cocktail parties, and had created personal scrapbooks with them. The deceased individuals included the former governor of Washington State, Dixie Lee Ray, and the former mayor of Tacoma, Jack Hyde.

The Plaintiffs sued on several theories: (1) "Outrageous conduct," (2) negligent infliction of emotional distress, and (3) invasion of privacy. Pierce County Superior Court judges threw out all of these lawsuits, saying that they had no legal basis.

The Washington State Supreme Court had already decided in earlier cases that the first two theories could be used only if the plaintiff was present at the time of the wrongful conduct. Since the plaintiffs were not present at the time the photos were misused, the Superior Court judges ruled that the Plaintiffs could not sue, even though the conduct of the Pierce County employees was clearly wrongful. The Superior Court decisions were affirmed with regard to these first two theories.

The third theory was "invasion of privacy." The Superior Court judges threw out these cases on prior decisions of the State Supreme Court which seemed to say that there is no right to sue for an invasion of privacy in Washington State.

The State Supreme Court disagreed, and allowed the Plaintiffs to sue. It held that the Superior Court Judges had misinterpreted prior cases. The Supreme Court also said that to the extent that earlier cases implied that there is no right to sue for invasion of privacy, they should be overruled. In other words, the court was establishing a new precedent.

That was not the end of the controversy, however. The County argued that even if citizens can sue for damages for invasion of their right to privacy, Plaintiffs in this case could not sue because the County only violated the rights of the deceased, not the rights of their relatives (the Plaintiffs). Again, the Supreme Court disagreed.

The Supreme Court said that "every individual has some phases of his life and his activities, and some facts about himself, that he does not expose to the public eye, but keeps entirely to himself or to close personal friends. Sexual relations, for example, are normally entirely private matters, as are family quarrels, many unpleasant or disgraceful or humiliating illnesses, most intimate personal letters, most details of a man’s life in his home, and some of his past history that he would rather forget. When these intimate details of his life are spread before the public gaze in a manner highly offensive to the ordinary reasonable man, there is an actionable invasion of his privacy, unless the matter is one of legitimate public interest."

The Court concluded that the relatives of the deceased could sue the county.