A panel of appellate court justices in Santa Ana have rejected a retired California Highway Patrol officer's attempt to get out of a lawsuit involving the leaked photos of a decapitated Ladera Ranch teenager, according to records obtained Thursday.
The Catsouras family, of Ladera Ranch, sued the CHP and two of its employees, Aaron Reich and Thomas O'Donnell, for negligence and violation of privacy, alleging two officers released ghastly photos of Nikki Catsouras after a deadly Halloween 2006 crash. Traveling at more than 100 mph along the 241 toll road in Lake Forest, Catsouras crashed her father's Porsche into a toll booth and was decapitated. Alcohol did not play a role in the crash.
Catsouras' family described her as a shy, free-spirited photography student at Saddleback College who loved to work with special education children, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Appellate Court Justices Eileen Moore, who wrote the majority opinion, William Rylaarsdam and Richard Aronson ruled that the Catsouras family can recover their legal costs, but rejected the family's request for sanctions against Reich.
Reich argued that he was protected by the 1st Amendment because he emailed the photographs to friends and family along with an anti-drunk driving message.
Reich's attorney Jon Schlueter was encouraged that the justices, while not letting his client out of the lawsuit, they did not rule on the merits of the 1st Amendment claim.
Reich destroyed the emails that would show he sent anti-drunk driving messages with the photos at the request of his supervisors, Schlueter said.
The justices questioned during oral arguments whether the recipients of the emails still had them, but Reich's attorneys conceded they had not investigated that.
Schlueter said Reich's attorneys intend to find out if the recipients still had the emails so they can try to prove the retired officer's claims during a lower-court trial that could start in a year.
"This is a huge 1st Amendment case,'' Schlueter said. "What my client did is protected by the 1st Amendment. Some people might not like what he did, but the 1st Amendment protects speech.''
Reich has until July 5 to appeal to the state Supreme Court, but Schlueter doubted his client would go to the higher court. If not, the appellate court will finalize the case July 25 and it will go back to the Orange County Superior Court and attorneys can begin discovery.
O'Donnell has previously argued that he did not forward any of the photos.
The family's lawsuit alleges that the officers sent the photos to personal email accounts and they were later spread virally on hundreds of websites.
—City News Service
Using the photos on the other hand is not illegal, but a serious ethical issue that is tied with it. Non-ethical doesn't always mean illegal on our society.
Also, from reading the material I have here, there has been nothing that said there was no alcohol involved, it just said she was drive on the 241 in daddy's Porsche going really fast speeds. The police officers didn't have to be the only ones that have taken photos of the scene. Anyone could have pulled over and grabbed picture, or people that were driving by on the 241. Are you going to confiscate all the cameras of pedestrians that got photos of the incident as well and file lawsuit for their actions? I firmly believe the officer needs to give the family an apology for what he has done for distasteful behavior, but nothing he has done is illegal. As I said before, distasteful and unethical does not mean illegal.
'Distasteful'?, 'unethical'?? You sound like a lawyer, unable to distinguish 'illegal' from 'wrong'. This is where I read in the above article that alcohol/drunk-driving wasn't involved in the actual accident: 'Alcohol did not play a role in the crash.' It begs the question of why did the officers use these (unobscured!) photos in an anti-drunk driving email. Have you read the two articles linked to this one? They go into more depth on the ongoing tragedy this has caused for this family. This isn't a First Amendment/Freedom of Speech or Press case. This is a case of sworn Peace Officers wrongly taking pictures they had access to as Peace Officers (not from journalists from my understanding of the article) and mis-appropriating them to the level of civil (possibly criminal) negligence. It's important to point out that their superiors made them delete the emails they had sent, and I'm glad the courts have sided with the family on this one. If it was a journalist or papparazzi who had taken these pictures, it WOULD be different, but these were public servants who didn't take the step of obscuring the most graphic parts of these photos before distributing them to whoever they saw fit. The officers could have left it up to the family to make a statement about the danger of teen drivers and distracted driving, but instead took it on themselves, and cannot use the First Amendment as a defense for the ongoing family tragedy that they are responsible for.
Running the photos though with the appropriate message though is completely in their right. I am not saying if they did that right, it is just not illegal. People have different perspective or right and wrong and moral and immoral - but unless there is a law that states you cannot do it, then it is right in the eyes of justice.
The medical profession went through the same thing, where doctors facing malpractice suits were instructed not to say to their patients or their families that they were sorry, because that would appear to admit guilt, but many patients and their families decided to sue for malpractice precisely because the doctor never siad they were sorry for what happened, or just generally seemed so remorseless, because they would never give any hint that they had done anything wrong. The medical profession got past that and now doctors can say they're sorry without it being an admission of guilt, and malpractice rates have gone down. Imagine the healing that could take place if the officers weren't being coached by their lawyers to stonewall the family and the court system that they had done anything wrong with this whole incident.
The real issue is that there are no laws governing the internet. Hopefully, this case will lay down the framework for laws governing e-mails and privacy. Best of luck in pursuit of this case and my sincere sympathy to the grieving family.
I think it was inappropriate and unprofessional of the officers to send these pictures out to friends, but that's an issue for their supervisors to deal with. I do not see anything illegal in their actions. How is this any different from the media broadcasting live pictures of people leaping from the twin towers as they burned?
People need to understand that you don't get privacy in a public place. If you are in a public location, short of a bathroom, anything you do or say is subject to end up in media. This girl got exactly what she deserved. This is what happens when you recklessly drive. No one put a gun up to her head and said, "you have to take the car our and kill yourself." Sure, teenagers make big mistakes like this everyday - she just wasn't lucky enough to avoid death - I know I have. People need to better understand the 1st amendment laws because obviously, many people feel they are entitled to more privacy than the law gives.
It is unethical and unprofessional to run photos without the consent of the family, but it is not illegal if the murder happened in say, in the middle of an alley - downtown. I am sorry, but the Internet isn't any different than any other media source other than it is faster and on demand. There is plenty of law outlining what we can and cannot do - and the journalist 1st amendment right is something I adamantly support and fight for. The real issue is the police officers lacking in professionalism and didn't follow their company regulations. Now if I broke a rule at work - I don't go to jail, you typically get fired.
It is a basic equation of 1 + 1 = 2 and she knew it = 2 and not 4. She made the choice to continued to do so - knowing completely well the consequence. I don't feel bad for people that die from drugs or accidents that they were in control of. At that point, you choose to die and it is just sheer luck that you don't.
Life if precious and it only takes one single mistake to end it all.
If you drive on the freeway in a car, you have a chance that someone will hit you hard, and you will die. So is it OK that you drive a car and lose your life, because you are completely aware of this? "Life if precious and it only takes one single mistake to end it all." Yes, but according to you, you deserve to lose it for a mistake, Oliver. "This girl got exactly what she deserved" Perhaps you really meant to say "The girl sadly lost her precious life over a stupid mistake", right Oliver?
Example, when I was 16, I was really into street racing and I was dumb enough to do a 180 into a steel bench. This mistake was 100% my fault and there would be no one else to blame but myself. On the other hand, my father's co-worker recently was t-boned and his 3 year old was killed in the accident. My father's co-worker was driving safely while another driver was reckless. It is a very different situation there where the other driver, is to blame - difference lies in the place of fault. She may not have deserved to die, but the reality of it all and the moral of this story is that this is the consequences of these kind of actions.
But if I were to use your previous logic "This girl got exactly what she deserved. This is what happens when you recklessly drive" and you have admitted to street racing, then we can all conclude that you were even more reckless and you definitely did not get what you deserved. Do you think that you deserve to die? I don't. I find it interesting that you can't appreciate someone making similar mistakes to you, yet you have zero compassion about it. There is an inherent sense of immortality that young people have (I don't have it anymore), call it human nature, call it "stupid" if it makes you feel better. But would it be more accurate to say that this is a tragedy borne out of immaturity? Just a thought.
I feel living life has a lot to do with luck. I have many friends from high school, one in particular in mind that would have made a great marine, was a 4.0 student, and would an asset to our community, but he died from a drunk driver t-boning him. Did he deserve to die? no - did he though? yes. I am not saying she deserved to die for such a mistake, but I am saying that is the heavy consequence you pay when you drive recklessly. Is being young and nieve and excuse to do such actions? I don't believe so. I personally feel really lucky that most of the major insidents I've been in have ended better than worse and I feel I've been let off easy. Living life requires a certain degree of luck and for the unlucky ones, that is why we have news.
For me, it's sad. Sad that you chalk you life up to luck and judge Nikki to be undeserving of the luck that has been bestowed upon you. I am sad for Nikki and her family because I have children and they make mistakes and I would never wish upon anyone what Nikki's family is going through. I don't know if I could survive it. Here's to you Oliver, have all the luck in the world, and may the rest of us be as lucky as you.
People routinely go over the speed limit on freeways, even if you do not. Some go way over, some slightly over. The issue then is driving on such a freeway -- you are aware of the dangers, you take a risk. Do you deserve whatever comes by taking that risk? Driving fast is a *bigger* risk. Driving *very very fast* is still a bigger one. If life is the most precious thing we have, surely a mistake does not *deserve* its end. It might have been 100% your fault for doing a 180 into a steel bench, do you *deserve* to be dead right now? There are consequence to actions, do people not deserve to at least live to find that out for themselves? Someone cuts you off in traffic. You swerve, but you are safe . That person hits a divider, car spins over, he is crushed under a truck, and dies. Is it your sense of justice that the fate he is meted is just punishment for cutting you off? What if he was rushing to the hospital because his daughter had been admitted there for an accident caused by taking her mom's car without permission and crashing it on the 241. I don't think anyone does not understand that her accident was a consequence of her stupidity. Nor is anybody condoning her part in it. The question was whether death was the deserved punishment for her actions?
I am sad for Nikki's family that she was the one that had to be the one that was made an example. Lucky and unlucky is being part of life. You just gotta live with the swings and to its fullest. No one chooses to be unlucky to be born as a orphan child in Africa. At the same time not everyone is lucky enough to be born to billionaires - but you just gotta make with what you got with whatever time you got. For now, my gift is something I can share with the community which brings me a lot happiness - and hopefully one day be good enough to share it with the rest of the world.
Also, you ask if my actions in the past deserve my own death and I firmly believe so. What if someone was sitting on that bench? That person would be dead as well. I firmly believed I could of been unlucky enough where instead of just hitting the bench, it could have splintered and impaled through my door and into me - but no, I was lucky enough to live another day to share my talent today.
I have an inkling, and I could be wrong, that you really don't feel she deserved to die.
Maybe people would take your point if it came from a more compassionate place since you can absolutely relate to the choice that Nikki made.