California and International Celebrity and Employee Invasion of Privacy

Today, celebrity and workplace privacy is being invaded on a daily basis. The right of celebrities to privacy is constantly being abused through the misappropriation by others of their name (or one confusingly similar to it), likeness and images. The right of publicity, the right to control the commercial use of their identity, is constantly infringed. Celebrity hospital records and other private facts are routinely leaked to the public. Their seclusion or solitude is intruded upon by photographers. And celebrities are constantly defamed by being put in a false light.
Now individual citizens are also having their privacy invaded in the work place by employers who utilize surveillance cameras and computer software programs to monitor their employees and forcing their workers to sign waivers of their expectations of privacy.
For decades, photographs of celebrities have been used in advertising without the permission of the celebrity. Stories in tabloids routinely link them to inappropriate behavior they had nothing to do with, and they are accused of actions they never took. Photos are obtained by using by surreptitious means and their cell phone calls are intercepted.
Anyone can suddenly become a celebrity. But in order to make a claim for the misappropriation of a celebritys name, likeness, voice or image, a celebrity needs to show that the defendant used an aspect of the celebritys identity, that it was used for a commercial or exploitative purpose and that the celebrity never gave consent for such a use.
Celebrities today include actors, authors, artists, politicians, models, athletes, musicians, singers, television personalities, well-known business executives, and any other of hundreds of types who seek to be in the public eye including reality TV stars. However, to have your privacy invaded, you dont have to be a celebrity. All you need is a job.
London has in recent years become the venue of choice for celebrities to bring defamation lawsuits, however California is paving the way for workplace invasion of privacy cases. At the law firm of Sebastian Gibson we have over thirty years of experience in California and in London and Sebastian Gibson has law degrees both in the U.S. and the U.K.
Today, damage awards in many such celebrity and invasion of privacy lawsuits are covered in insurance policies under the category of advertising injury. The term advertising injury covers defamation including libel, slander and product disparagement, infringements of copyrights, trademarks, slogans and advertising ideas or a style of doing business, and may include other violations of intellectual property rights such as the unauthorized use of a celebritys name, likeness, voice or image. A violation of a right to privacy is also covered under such policies of insurance as either an advertising or personal injury.
Advertising requires widespread distribution to the public at large. However, with the advent of the internet, almost anyone can cause an advertising injury with the click of the mouse. An e-mail sent to a wide enough audience, an entry on Facebook, a tweet on Twitter can all cause advertising injury, as can a statement contained on a persons or a companys web site.
Insurance companies have tried to deny coverage from time to time but in the case where a company is involved, an insurance company must prove both that the policyholder either made the defamatory statement or directed the employee to make it, and that the policyholder had knowledge of the falsity of the statement, a situation which is rarely the case.
Today the right of privacy is also coming to the forefront as more and more employers operate surveillance systems in areas in which their employees have a reasonable expectation of privacy. In an effort to prevent theft, sexual harassment, the viewing of pornography on office computers and the perpetration of actionable civil or criminal acts, employers are in many instances intruding on and invading the privacy of their employees. Employers are using hidden cameras, workplace searches, keystroke monitoring computer programs, e-mail, website and voice mail monitoring, and other software to snoop on their employees while cloaking themselves with the claim that their actions are being done to protect their employees.
The constitutional protection against unlawful searches is today being discarded by employers who require employees (who have no bargaining power to refuse) to sign waivers which state that they have no reasonable expectation of privacy in their place of employment.
It is only through litigation that this growing problem can be stopped. With large jury awards and multi-million dollar settlements, those who have in the past failed to respect the privacy of celebrities and employers who have shown disdain for the privacy of their workforce may think twice before installing monitoring equipment and performing illegal searches of their employees spaces, computers or monitoring their e-mails, cell phone calls and visits to web sites.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: R. Sebastian Gibson
Mr. Gibsons firm practices law in a wide variety of areas of law including California and International protection of celebrity rights, invasion of privacy, defamation, advertising injury, misappropriation of name, likeness and image, workplace invasion of privacy, representation of entertainers, sports figures, artists, musicians and actors, personal injury, auto, pedestrian, motorcycle, car, truck and bicycle accidents, and insurance law throughout Southern California from San Diego, Orange County, Irvine, Anaheim, Los Angeles, Huntington Beach, La Jolla, Temecula, Buena Park, Riverside, Escondido, Costa Mesa, Laguna Beach, Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Oxnard, San Luis Obispo, Indian Wells, Fullerton, Orange, Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Newport Beach, Carlsbad and internationally.