Washington

The Washington Supreme Court has left open the question of whether false lights similarity to defamation, and the First Amendment protections implicated in defamation claims, precludes the recognition of the false light tort. Eastwood v. Cascade Broadcasting Co., 722 P.2d 1295 (Wash. 1986).

Intrusion: Employees of a county medical examiners office were accused of displaying autopsy photographs in a manner that invaded the privacy of the relatives of the deceased pictured. The state Supreme Court unanimously found that a common law right to privacy exists in Washington and that the autopsy photographs clearly were private, and also that the relatives had a protectable privacy interest in the autopsy photographs. Reid v. Pierce County, 961 P.2d 333 (Wash. 1998).

Filming a pharmacy interior from outside, through a window, was protected because the film was shot from a place open to the public. Mark v. KING Broadcasting Co., 618 P.2d 512 (Wash. App. 1980), affd, 635 P.2d 1081 (Wash. 1981), cert. denied, 457 U.S. 1124 (1982).

A non-journalist who videotaped a demonstration won a declaratory judgment stating that a ban on recording oral communications did not apply to recording, with a readily visible device, conversations on a public street that are loud enough to be heard by others. Fordyce v. City of Seattle, No. C92-75WD (W.D. Wash. 1993).