## Facts

- In 1988, Salvatore Ruscitti was murdered in a murder-for-hire scheme connected to a Southern California auto dealership.
- Steve Gates, an assistant manager at the dealership, was initially charged as a coconspirator but pleaded guilty in 1992 to being an accessory after the fact to the murder for hire and served a prison sentence.
- Gates later claimed he lived an obscure, lawful life and became a respected community member.
- In 2001, Discovery Communications, Inc. and New Dominion Pictures, Inc. produced and broadcast a televised documentary episode dramatizing the Ruscitti murder.
- The program drew from public official court records regarding the crime and Gates’s conviction.
- Gates sued, alleging (1) defamation based on purportedly false depictions of his involvement, and (2) public disclosure of private facts based on broadcasting his felony plea and using his photograph.

## Issues

1. Whether a media defendant may be liable for public disclosure of private facts for truthfully broadcasting information about a prior felony conviction obtained from public official court records, despite the passage of time and the subject’s subsequent rehabilitation.
2. Whether, under California’s anti-SLAPP statute, the plaintiff showed a probability of prevailing on the private-facts claim arising from a documentary broadcast addressing a matter of public interest.

## Decision

- The California Supreme Court held Discovery could not be held liable for public disclosure of private facts for broadcasting truthful information drawn from public judicial records.
- The court affirmed the Court of Appeal and required the privacy claim to be stricken under the anti-SLAPP statute.
- The court reasoned that First Amendment protections for truthful publication of information from official records barred the claim.
- The court disapproved prior California authority to the extent it permitted liability for identifying a rehabilitated offender using truthful, lawfully obtained information from official records.
- The defamation claim was not reinstated; it had already been dismissed after the trial court sustained a demurrer without leave to amend.

## Legal Principles

- Truthful publication of information contained in official public records, particularly judicial records, is protected by the First Amendment absent a state interest of the highest order.
- For the tort of public disclosure of private facts, information appearing in public official records open to inspection is not “private” in the required legal sense.
- The passage of time does not convert publicly recorded criminal proceeding facts into private facts for purposes of imposing tort liability on truthful republication.
- Under California’s anti-SLAPP statute, once the defendant shows the claim arises from protected speech activity in connection with a public issue, the plaintiff must show a probability of prevailing; constitutional and public-record protections can defeat that showing as a matter of law.

## Conclusion

The court ruled that a documentary’s truthful reporting of a person’s old felony conviction from public judicial records cannot support a public-disclosure privacy claim, and it ordered the claim stricken under the anti-SLAPP statute because First Amendment and public-record protections barred liability.


Gates v. Discovery Commc’ns, Inc., 34 Cal. 4th 679, 21 Cal. Rptr. 3d 663 (Cal. 2004)