Invasion Of Privacy

Silence in the court. The only smiles came from the middle of the room where the Sweets sat, holding hands. Milne wiped his glasses on his robe, rubbing his eyes before putting them back on. Nina knew he had a criminal trial resuming at eleven-thirty. He had no time for wordplay. She felt the weight of the crushing time pressure caused by too many cases and too few judges, which made attorneys forget their best points and judges miss the ones they remembered to say. "Ms. Reilly? Would you care to respond?" Milne was saying. She picked up her notes, gulping the dry air, as the courtroom waited for the first words to issue forth from her empty mind. Up you go.... "Just a few brief points, Your Honor. Let me first introduce my client, Theresa London." The judge gravely inclined his head. Terry also nodded, as Nina had coached her to do, and sat back down gracefully. "Opposing counsel's bombast aside, Your Honor, Terry London has been working on this film for over a year. She has put countless hours and a lot of her own money into it. It's a work of art, based on truth. The world will be able to judge its merit. The plaintiffs, Tamara Sweet's parents and friends, encouraged Ms. London to make this film because they thought it might help them to locate her. And now they want to destroy it. Why?" Nina caught Milne's eye, held it, and made him listen. "Our expert, Monty Glasser, producer of the television series Real-Life Riddles, says this film has considerable artistic merit. As a documentary, it takes a point of view. The plaintiffs are offended by the filmmaker's point of view, because the film portrays them without masks, as they are, no more and no less. "That's what this lawsuit is all about. "But the film doesn't belong to the plaintiffs. They did not finance it; they did not labor over it; it is not their artistic effort. "The United State Supreme Court doesn't look kindly on muzzling artistic expression in this country. Plaintiffs don't know what the reaction of the public to this film is going to be, Your Honor, so there has been no harm to them. There may be no harm. To prevent a book or film from even being made public is prior restraint. It's the kind of First Amendment censorship our courts are least likely to order." Milne looked at the clock. Even the United States Constitution didn't sing for him today. Nina decided to finish quickly, with her best ammo. "And, of course, the plaintiffs can't win this case on the merits," Nina said. "One of our affirmative defenses makes it a lost cause. Consent, Your Honor." Milne stopped writing and gave her his full attention. "This is really just a simple contract matter. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the film does invade the privacy of the plaintiffs under the usual definitions," Nina said. That woke everybody up. "The contracts my client made with the plaintiffs said that she was going to make a documentary about the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Tamara Sweet based on film footage she gathered, and that she reserved the sole right to edit the footage. It's all here in the exhibits, signed, dated, and notarized. Consent was given in the broadest possible terms. "There's no inO'Shaughnessy, Perri is the author of 'Invasion Of Privacy', published 2004 under ISBN 9780440242475 and ISBN 0440242479.