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
- 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.
- 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.