Hill v. Hayes
Decision Date | 15 April 1965 |
Citation | 207 N.E.2d 604,260 N.Y.S.2d 7,15 N.Y.2d 986 |
Parties | , 207 N.E.2d 604 James J. HILL, Respondent, v. Joseph HAYES et al., Defendants, and Time, Inc., Appellant. |
Court | New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Supreme Court, Special and Trial Term, New York County.
Action was brought for damages for violation of plaintiffs' right of privacy under Section 51 of the Civil Rights Law providing that any person whose name, portrait, or picture is used in the state for advertising purposes or for purposes of trade without written consent first obtained may maintain equitable action to prevent and restrain use thereof and may also sue and recover damages for any injuries sustained. The plaintiffs and their children were held captive in their home on September 11, 1952 by three escaped convicts. In the spring of 1953 one of the defendants wrote a novel having a story about three escaped convicts holding a family as hostages in their home, and the novel was later made into a play and also into a moving picture bearing the same title. In 1954 the play opened for a try-out and publisher of magazine decided to do an article on the play. The magazine publisher in 1955 published an article entitled 'True Crime Inspires Tense Play' and comparing the play with the ordeal of the plaintiffs about two and one-half years previously.
The Special and Trial Term entered a judgment for the plaintiffs, and the magazine publisher appealed.
The Appellate Division, 18 A.D.2d 485, 240 N.Y.S. 286, modified and affirmed the judgment and held that evidence sustained the verdict for plaintiffs, but that the admission in evidence and the showing of the moving picture, which was released almost one year after the magazine article appeared and subsequent to institution of the action for damages, was error requiring a new trial on the issue of damages. Botein, P. J., dissented in part.
The Special and Trial Term on remand awarded reduced damages to the plaintiffs and entered an order pursuant to a stipulation of the parties in favor of the plaintiffs.
The magazine publisher appealed to the Court of Appeals.
Harold R. Medina, Jr., and Alan J. Hruska, New York City, for appellant.
Leonard Garment and Donald J. Zoeller, New York, City, for respondent.
Judgment affirmed, with costs, on the majority and concurring opinions at the Appellate division.
The article, published (in 1955) by the defendant in its magazine Life, on which the plaintiff's cause of action is predicated, read in this way:
'THE DESPERATE HOURS'
The article also contained photographs of an actual news headline relating to the plaintiff's experience (of three years previously), of the house in which the plaintiff and his family then lived and in which they were held captive and of actual stage settings of the play.
I do not believe that section 51 of the Civil Rights Law, Consol.Laws, c. 6 may be availed of to create a cause of action against those who published an article reporting a new play, unquestionably a subject worthy of press comment, and pointing out that there was a relationship between the play and an actual event, also concededly newsworthy, in which the plaintiff some years before had been involved. There can be no doubt that the play certainly bore a close and legitimate relationship to the reallife incident as, indeed, the columnar comparison made by the defendant in its brief...
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...were to the Sullivan Case, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. 710 and to Hill v. Hayes, 18 A.D.2d 485, 240 N.Y.S.2d 286, aff'd. mem., 15 N.Y.2d 986, 260 N.Y.S.2d 7, 207 N.E.2d 604.9 This happened again the Curtis Pub. Co. v. Butts, supra. See the opinion of Mr. Justice Black, 388 U.S. at 170, 87 S.Ct. ......
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