## Facts

- Marla Ross was raped in her home in 1983; the crime remained unsolved.
- Police considered Steven Fossum a suspect and asked Ross to view a lineup; Ross said her attacker was not present.
- Fossum was later convicted of two other rapes occurring around the same period.
- In 1986, a television station and two reporters produced and aired a documentary arguing Fossum’s innocence in the convictions.
- The documentary’s theory relied on asserted similarities between Ross’s unsolved rape and one of the rapes attributed to Fossum; Ross’s inability to identify Fossum was presented as exculpatory.
- The broadcast described specific aspects of Ross’s rape (including the rapist’s pretext to enter the home and sexual and bathing-related demands) and also described other rapes.
- The program did not use Ross’s last name, but used her first name and showed a photograph of the house where she lived at the time of the rape.
- Ross alleged the broadcast included at least one inaccurate detail about her assault and that the broadcast’s details enabled identification of her as the victim.
- After the broadcast, Fossum’s convictions were publicly reexamined, including executive action on one conviction and further proceedings on another.
- Ross sued the station and reporters in federal court under Texas law for public disclosure of private facts; the district court granted summary judgment to defendants, and Ross appealed.

## Issues

1. Under Texas law governing public disclosure of private facts, can a rape victim recover when a broadcast discloses detailed facts of the rape and limited identifiers, if the information is tied to a public controversy about a convicted rapist’s possible innocence?
2. If a state-law privacy claim would otherwise lie, does the First Amendment bar liability for truthful publication of matters of legitimate public concern in this context?

## Decision

- The Fifth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the defendants.
- The court held that, under Texas law, the broadcast content was newsworthy as a matter of law because it was integral to a legitimate public controversy over the correctness of criminal rape convictions.
- Because newsworthiness defeated the state-law tort claim, the court did not develop an independent, extensive First Amendment holding.

## Legal Principles

- Texas’s public-disclosure tort requires publicity of private facts that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person and are not of legitimate public concern.
- Newsworthiness (legitimate public concern) is a complete defense to public-disclosure liability.
- When underlying facts are undisputed, newsworthiness may be resolved as a question of law on summary judgment.
- Reporting that is central to evaluating the validity of criminal convictions may qualify as newsworthy even if it includes intensely personal facts about a crime victim and may permit limited identification.
- Alleged minor inaccuracies in a publication do not defeat a public-disclosure claim when the dispositive element is that the subject matter is newsworthy.

## Conclusion

The court concluded that the documentary’s use of detailed rape information and limited identifying material served a legitimate public purpose—assessing a contested rape conviction—and therefore Texas law barred a privacy recovery for public disclosure of private facts.


Ross v. Midwest Commc’ns, Inc., 870 F.2d 271 (5th Cir. 1989)