This assignment has one part. The total grade is 50 points.
This is an analysis essay question that can be addressed in a one- to two-page essay. You may want to draft the essay in a word processing tool, such as Microsoft Word, and then copy it into the assignment.
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Essay (50 points)
Analyze the following hypothetical invasion-of-privacy scenario. First determine which branches of invasion of privacy exist based on the facts. Second, apply the legal elements for each of those applicable branches to see if the plaintiff has a valid case.
Studd Lee is today’s hottest Hollywood actor. After winning three Golden Globes, Lee is now nominated for an Oscar for his role in Dusk to Dawn, a horror/action thriller in which he is a vampire/zombie who terrorizes residents of the Hollywood Hills at night and by day is a superhero who saves downtown Los Angeles from being overtaken by a drug cartel. As one critic put it, “Lee brilliantly brings out the internal, supernatural strife between good and evil.” Not everyone, however, is a fan.
Longtime gossip columnist for the Hollywood Scoop, Sheeza Clodd, thinks Lee is an overrated pretty boy. In fact, she has been trying to dig up dirt on Studd Lee since he snubbed her at the after-party at the Beverly Hilton following this year’s Golden Globe Awards presentation.
Sheeza had long suspected that Studd Lee was gay, but could never confirm it. She based her suspicions solely on the fact that she saw him and an unidentified male companion having dinner at Spago in Beverly Hills with openly gay actor Neil Patrick Harris and his partner, David Burtka. They appeared to her to be two couples enjoying a night on the town. She saw Lee with that same male companion at the bar at Dan Tana’s in West Hollywood. Sheeza often frequents celebrity haunts in disguise in order to listen in on conversations for her column, “Juicy Tidbits.”
One of Sheeza’s close friends is a nurse in Lee’s personal physician’s office. After much hounding by Sheeza, the nurse agreed to let her in before the office opened so that she could place a tiny audio tape recorder in the examining room on the day of Lee’s routine checkup. When Sheeza retrieved the tape recorder later that day and listened to the conversation between Lee and his doctor, she was shocked to learn that Lee is HIV positive.
Armed with this new information, she wrote the following entry in her column:
“Well, sorry girls, your favorite boy-toy is off the market. It turns out that heartthrob Studd Lee is gay. But, boys, don’t get too excited either because he is HIV positive. I wonder if his agent at William Morris Endeavor is in on this little ruse. I know one thing for sure: Some top Hollywood show-runners will be interested in the news.”
It turns out that the unidentified male companion was Studd Lee’s brother, who happened to be in town. Also, Lee does have HIV, but he contracted the disease after having unprotected sex with a woman in the Caribbean.
Later, Lee was furious when he read Clodd’s column and immediately called his attorneys at the Los Angeles firm, Dewey, Cheatem & Howe. But the trouble didn’t stop there. An AIDS advocacy group in New York decided to use Studd Lee as part of its new campaign to raise funds for its lobbying effort. They felt they could capitalize on his popularity and bring in a large number of donations.
