## Facts

- Charles S. Bernstein was convicted of bank robbery in 1919 and later convicted of first-degree murder in 1933 and sentenced to death.
- A Washington reporter, Martha Strayer, investigated Bernstein’s case and developed information suggesting wrongful conviction; Bernstein was later released and pardoned.
- From roughly 1936 to 1948, news articles and radio programs publicized fictionalized versions of Bernstein’s story; Bernstein conceded he had been an involuntary public figure regarding these events.
- In 1952, NBC aired an episode of “The Big Story” dramatizing Strayer’s investigation and the exoneration of a wrongfully convicted man modeled on Bernstein.
- The broadcast used Strayer’s real name, did not use Bernstein’s name, altered certain details, but retained a narrative substantially similar to Bernstein’s life history.
- Bernstein asserted he had lived privately for years and that the broadcast revived discrediting episodes the public had effectively forgotten.
- Bernstein sued NBC for invasion of privacy, arguing the broadcast was an impermissible republication of facts that were no longer newsworthy.
- NBC moved for summary judgment.

## Issues

1. Whether a person previously subjected to extensive publicity from criminal proceedings can, through lapse of time and later private living, regain a privacy right that bars renewed publication or dramatization of those events.
2. Whether a fictionalized television dramatization substantially based on public, historically reported criminal proceedings and official actions can constitute actionable invasion of privacy.

## Decision

- The court granted NBC’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed the complaint.
- The court treated Bernstein’s convictions, imprisonment, exoneration, and pardon as matters of legitimate public interest and public record.
- The court held that dramatization or republication of those public events years later, even in fictionalized form, did not constitute an actionable invasion of privacy.

## Legal Principles

- Privacy tort liability generally does not arise from publication of matters of legitimate public interest, particularly facts drawn from criminal proceedings and official actions that are public in character.
- The passage of time does not, by itself, convert publicly known or public-record facts about serious crimes, convictions, or pardons into private facts protected from later retelling.
- Fictionalization (including altered names and modified details) does not create a privacy claim where the communication remains a dramatized account of newsworthy public events rather than disclosure of genuinely private facts.

## Conclusion

The court held that Bernstein could not use privacy law to bar a later dramatized retelling of his publicly known criminal proceedings and pardon, and it entered summary judgment for NBC because the broadcast concerned public-record, newsworthy events rather than protected private facts.


Bernstein v. Nat'l Broad. Co., 129 F. Supp. 817 (D.D.C. 1955)