Tag: infliction of emotional distress

November 12, 2013 Privacy, Right of Publicity

Guy faces lawsuit for using another man’s Facebook pics to send sexually explicit communications to undercover cops

Defendant emailed three pictures, thinking he was communicating with two 14-year-old girls. But he was actually communicating with a police detective. And the pictures were not of defendant, but of plaintiff — a cop in a neighboring community. The pictures were not sexually explicit, but the accompanying communications were. Defendant had copied them from plaintiff’s Facebook page.

Plaintiff and his wife sued defendant under a number of tort theories. Defendant moved to dismiss plaintiffs’ claims for false light publicity and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The court denied the motion.

It found that the false light in which defendant placed plaintiff through his conduct would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and that defendant had knowledge of or acted in reckless disregard as to the falsity of the identity of the person in the photo, and the false light into which the plaintiff would be placed.

As for the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim, the court found that: (1) defendant intended to inflict emotional distress or that he knew or should have known that emotional distress was the likely result of his conduct; (2) that the conduct was extreme and outrageous; (3) that the conduct was the cause of plaintiff’s distress; and (4) that the emotional distress sustained by the plaintiff was severe.

Defendant argued that his conduct was not extreme and outrageous. The court addressed that argument by noting that:

[Defendant] cannot do that with a straight face. The test is whether “the recitation of the facts to an average member of the community would arouse his resentment against the actor and lead him to exclaim, Outrageous!” . . . This is such a case.

Plaintiff’s wife’s intentional infliction of emotional distress claim survived as well. This was not, as defendant argued, an allegation of bystander emotional distress, such as that of a witness to an automobile accident. Defendant’s conduct implied that plaintiff was a sexual predator. This would naturally reflect on his spouse and cause her great personal embarrassment and natural concern for her own personal health quite apart from the distress she may have experienced from observing her husband’s own travail.

Dzamko v. Dossantos, 2013 WL 5969531 (Conn.Super. October 23, 2013)

November 16, 2010 Privacy

Case against iPhone eavesdropper moves forward

Caro v. Weintraub, 2010 WL 4514273 (D. Conn. November 2, 2010)

Stepson who used iPhone to record conversation about dying mother’s will may be liable for invasion of privacy and infliction of emotional distress.

This past summer the case against a man accused of using his iPhone to surreptitiously record a family conversation about his dying mother’s will got some attention when the court dismissed the stepfather-widower’s claim for violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

But the dismissal of that case was not the end of the story. Plaintiff had filed a separate lawsuit, claiming, among other things, invasion of privacy (by intrusion upon seclusion) and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Defendants (the allegedly eavesdropping iPhone user and his brother) moved to dismiss the invasion of privacy and emotional distress claims. The court denied the motion.

Plaintiff alleged that four days before his wife (defendants’ mother) died, defendants and some other family members came over to the house to discuss the mother’s will. Unbeknown to plaintiff, one of the defendant brothers allegedly used his iPhone to secretly record the conversation. In the subsequent litigation over the mother’s estate, the stepsons attempted to use an allegedly altered version of the recording as evidence.

The court found that the act of secretly recording the conversation could constitute invasion of privacy. Whether it actually happened the way plaintiff claimed will be decided later by a jury. But the judge found that a jury was entitled to make that determination. Plaintiff’s claims that defendants surreptitiously recorded an intimate conversation about a family member’s will qualified as an offensive intentional intrusion in private affairs that could be highly offensive to a reasonable person.

As for the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim, the court found that defendants’ alleged conduct “exceed[ed] all bounds usually tolerated by decent society.” As with the invasion of privacy claim, the question of liability will go to a jury (unless the case settles, of course.)

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