## Facts

- Kenneth D. Strickler, a U.S. Navy commander and California resident, survived a 1956 commercial flight that made an emergency ocean landing and was rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard.
- In 1957, National Broadcasting Company, Inc. aired a dramatized television program depicting the incident, broadcast in California and on NBC-affiliated stations nationwide, with The Mennen Company as sponsor/advertiser.
- The program used Strickler’s name and portrayed him praying during the emergency, dressed casually (not in uniform), and smoking; Strickler alleged it omitted his assistance during evacuation.
- Strickler claimed the broadcast placed him in a false position and caused humiliation, embarrassment, and mental suffering by reviving traumatic memories and presenting private conduct.
- Strickler filed a nine-count complaint asserting: (a) non-statutory invasion of privacy under multiple states’ laws (including California), (b) “right to publicity” claims, and (c) statutory privacy claims under New York and Virginia.
- Defendants moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim.

## Issues

1. Whether California law recognized a non-statutory (common-law) right of privacy broad enough to cover the challenged dramatized portrayal.
2. Whether the alleged “right to publicity” stated an actionable claim based on defendants’ use of Strickler’s name and identity in the broadcast.
3. Whether New York and Virginia statutory privacy claims were adequately pleaded and applicable to broadcasts primarily occurring outside those states.

## Decision

- The court granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the complaint in its entirety for failure to state a claim.
- The court declined to recognize or expand a broad California common-law privacy tort on the facts alleged.
- The court held the pleaded “right of publicity” theory was not actionable as alleged.
- The court dismissed the New York and Virginia statutory privacy counts because the statutes were inapplicable to the broadcast as pleaded and the allegations did not satisfy statutory requirements.

## Legal Principles

- A federal court applying state law will not create or extend an expansive common-law privacy cause of action absent a clear basis in that state’s law.
- Alleged offensive or misleading portrayals may be resolved as legally insufficient at the pleading stage when, even accepting the facts as true, the conduct would not be highly offensive to an ordinary person under the applicable privacy standard.
- A “right of publicity” theory requires plausible allegations of a protectable commercial/proprietary interest in one’s identity and a legally cognizable misuse of that interest under the governing state law.
- State privacy statutes aimed at commercial use of a person’s name or likeness for advertising or trade generally do not apply extraterritorially without allegations tying the relevant conduct to the enacting state and satisfying the statute’s elements.

## Conclusion

The court dismissed all privacy and publicity claims arising from a televised dramatization of a real emergency landing, holding that the pleaded facts did not support an actionable California common-law privacy or publicity claim and did not state viable statutory claims under New York or Virginia law.


Strickler v. Nat'l Broad. Co., 167 F. Supp. 68 (S.D. Cal. 1958)