## Facts

- Thomas Taggart worked for Port-O-San, a company that furnished and serviced portable latrines.
- In August 1969, Port-O-San sent Taggart to Bethel, New York to service latrines at the Woodstock music festival.
- Wadleigh-Maurice, Ltd. (WM) sent agents to film Woodstock and recorded more than 315,000 feet of film (about 120 hours).
- While Taggart was servicing the latrines, WM’s agents approached him, engaged him in conversation by asking what he was doing, and filmed him with sound motion-picture equipment.
- Taggart contended he was filmed without warning and without his consent, and that the encounter drew him away from his ordinary work so WM could capture a usable scene.
- WM later edited the footage into a feature-length documentary about the festival.
- Warner Bros., Inc. distributed the documentary for commercial viewing.
- The documentary included a sequence of about two minutes showing Taggart emptying latrines.
- Taggart claimed the sequence made him memorable to viewers and portrayed him as an object of ridicule, causing embarrassment and mental anguish, along with harm to his social life, family life, and employment.
- Taggart sued WM and Warner Bros. in federal court seeking damages and an injunction, alleging invasion of privacy under New Jersey law.
- Defendants argued that Woodstock was an event of public interest and that Taggart was shown only as part of truthful coverage of that public event.
- The district court granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment and dismissed Taggart’s action.
- Taggart appealed to the Third Circuit.

## Issues

1. Whether summary judgment was proper where Taggart claimed he was filmed without consent and used as an “involuntary performer” for a commercially distributed documentary, while defendants claimed the sequence was protected as depiction of an event of public interest.
2. Whether disputes about the nature of the filming and editing (incidental capture versus deliberate selection for comic effect) created genuine issues of material fact bearing on any public-interest/newsworthiness protection under New Jersey privacy law.

## Decision

- The Third Circuit reversed the grant of summary judgment for defendants.
- The court remanded for further proceedings because the record presented genuine issues of material fact about how Taggart was filmed, whether he consented, and whether the use was merely incidental to reporting a public event or instead a targeted use of a private individual for entertainment value.

## Legal Principles

- Summary judgment is improper when material facts are genuinely disputed and those disputes affect the legal characterization of the defendants’ conduct.
- Under New Jersey privacy law, depiction of individuals in connection with matters of legitimate public interest may be protected even without consent, but that protection is not automatic in every setting.
- A factfinder may need to distinguish between (a) incidental filming of a person who happens to be present at a public event and (b) conduct that selects and shapes a private person’s presence into an on-screen role for a commercial film.
- A film’s commercial distribution does not, by itself, decide the privacy question; what matters is the character of the use and the way the individual is presented.
- When the parties’ accounts conflict on whether a subject was merely recorded while working or was drawn into a performative sequence designed to make him a comic feature, a court should not resolve the dispute on a thin summary-judgment record.

## Conclusion

Because Taggart’s evidence could support a finding that he was singled out, filmed without consent, and presented as a ridiculed on-screen figure rather than merely captured incidentally during coverage of Woodstock, the Third Circuit held that the case could not be dismissed as a matter of law and required further factfinding on remand.


Taggart v. Wadleigh-Maurice, Ltd., 489 F.2d 434 (1973)