Legal Issues

By Stephen Bucaro

Invasion of Privacy

Photographing someone in a public place is not an invasion of privacy. In most states you can even photograph them with a hidden camera. The exceptions are Georgia, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, South Dakota, and Utah. But if you photograph a person in a place that is deemed to be private, such as through a window covered by curtains, that would be invasion of privacy.

It's illegal to record a person's voice without their permission in California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Oregon, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington.

Libel

If you publish something that damages someone's reputation, you could end up as the subject of a libel lawsuit. The law basically divides people into two categories in regard to libel, public figures and private persons.

If someone takes you to court with a libel suit they must prove the following: There must be a defamatory statement. Unfortunately, there are infinite possibilities of what might injure someone's reputation. You might say a golfer is "good" and be sued because the golfer is actually a "master", and to say that he's just good damages his reputation as a "master". There are four statements which are always defamatory: imputing criminal conduct; a loathsome disease; being incompetent; or unchaste behavior.

• The person being attacked must be identifiable. But your statement does not need to specifically name the person, if the average person should reasonably be expected to be able to identify the person from your description, you lose in court. Even if you call your work "fiction", you can be sued if one of your characters is identifiable as a real-life person to readers.

• The statement was made with malicious intent. In other words, you wrote a statement with the knowledge that it was false and your statement was meant to damage that person’s reputation.

• If your statement is true, it's not libel. The problem is being able to prove it's true.

• The statement must be expected to be believable by the average person. For example if you state that someone "walks around with his head up his ass", the court would hold that the act you portrayed the person as performing are physically impossible and couldn't be reasonably believed.

• The statement must cause damage. Actual economic loss or damaged to reputation isn't necessary. Injury can include holding someone up to hatred, ridicule or contempt, or cause them to be shunned or ostracized or suffer mental anguish or humiliation.

Private persons are afforded far greater protection than public figures. The private person does not have to prove malicious intent. He only needs to prove negligence, that you did not double-check your facts.

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