## Facts

- Pamela Howell was an in-patient at a private psychiatric hospital and asserted that secrecy of her hospitalization was important to her recovery.
- A tabloid covered the rehabilitation of Hedda Nussbaum, a figure connected to a widely publicized child-abuse death.
- A photographer entered the hospital’s secluded grounds without permission and used a telephoto lens to photograph Nussbaum walking outdoors with Howell.
- Hospital staff requested that the newspaper not publish photographs of patients, but the next day it published the photos on the front page with an article about Nussbaum’s recovery.
- The published image showed Howell beside Nussbaum and, according to Howell, revealed Howell’s psychiatric hospitalization to the public without her consent.
- Howell alleged severe emotional distress and humiliation from the disclosure.

## Issues

1. Whether publishing Howell’s photograph with a news story constituted use of her “name, portrait or picture” “for advertising purposes or for the purposes of trade” under N.Y. Civil Rights Law §§ 50–51.
2. Whether the defendants’ conduct in photographing and publishing Howell as a psychiatric patient was “extreme and outrageous” sufficient to support intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED).
3. Whether IIED may be used to obtain recovery where the statutory privacy claim fails under New York’s narrow privacy statute.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals affirmed dismissal of the complaint against the individual defendants.
- The Civil Rights Law §§ 50–51 claim failed because the photograph was published in connection with a newsworthy article and therefore was not a use for “advertising” or “trade.”
- The IIED claim failed because the conduct alleged, viewed in context of publication of newsworthy material, did not meet New York’s demanding “extreme and outrageous” standard.
- The derivative loss-of-consortium claim was dismissed with the underlying tort claims.

## Legal Principles

- New York recognizes no common-law right of privacy; privacy protection is limited to the narrowly drawn statutory remedy in Civil Rights Law §§ 50–51 and is construed strictly.
- Publication of newsworthy matters is not “advertising” or “trade” within §§ 50–51, even when made by a profit-seeking newspaper.
- A photograph accompanying a news story is protected by the newsworthiness doctrine when there is a “real relationship” between the image and the article’s subject.
- IIED requires conduct “so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency”; it is reserved for exceptional cases.
- IIED may not be used as an end-run around the Legislature’s limited privacy scheme when the gravamen of the claim is unwanted publicity tied to a newsworthy publication.

## Conclusion

The court held that publishing Howell’s photograph as part of a newsworthy report on a matter of public interest was outside the scope of Civil Rights Law §§ 50–51 and, without more, did not constitute the “extreme and outrageous” conduct required for IIED, requiring dismissal of all related claims.


Howell v. N.Y. Post Co., 81 N.Y.2d 115, 612 N.E.2d 699 (N.Y. 1993)