Does the average member of the public have any privacy rights?
Yes. The average member of the public is entitled to privacy protections, although the strength of those protections will vary depending upon the particular factual circumstances.
Generally, there are four different actions that an injured plaintiff can allege to recover for an unlawful invasion of his privacy. The first concerns the unlawful appropriation of another’s image. The plaintiff could make this claim, for example, if the defendant, an owner of a car dealership, uses plaintiff’s picture in a commercial or advertisement without permission.
The second type of wrongful invasion of privacy is in the nature of intrusion. If the plaintiff can prove that the defendant intruded into his or her solitude, seclusion, or private life in a manner that would be considered highly offensive to a reasonable person, the plaintiff is entitled to recover damages from the defendant. The issue of what actions are considered highly offensive depends greatly upon the factual circumstances under examination.
The third type of a privacy claim is the public disclosure of private facts. This cause of action requires that facts having no link to a legitimate public concern be disseminated by the defendant resulting in embarrassment, humiliation, or offense to the plaintiff. Whether the public has a legitimate concern in otherwise private facts about the plaintiff is always dependent upon the particular circumstances. For example, the public may have a legitimate interest in knowing that a local surgeon has the AIDS virus, which is an otherwise private matter, due to the potential health risks involved with that condition. In comparison, however, the public may not have a valid interest in knowing the HIV status of the local cabdriver, as there is no threat to the public health or safety in that situation.
A fourth type of privacy right is the right to be free from being placed in a false light in the public eye. This cause of action is very similar to a defamation action. In short, the plaintiff alleges that a communication about the plaintiff was made by defendant, it is untrue, and it was made to the public. The main difference between this cause of action and defamation is that for the invasion of privacy tort, the communication need not be defamatory, it need only be false and highly offensive to a reasonable person.
