Jeff Bezos Can Sue the Pants Off the National Enquirer
LAW AND ORDER
A lawsuit could change the way we think about privacy in the digital age.
By JOHN CULHANE February 08, 2019
John Culhane is distinguished professor of law at Delaware Law School, where he teaches courses in constitutional and family law.
he impending divorce of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie Bezos would have been a tabloid trash fire in any case. When $140 billion (give or take) is at stake, it’s impossible to imagine the messy proceedings staying private.
But the recent, explosive confrontation between Bezos and the National Enquirer has juiced the peep show fascination with the story. Bezos has acted courageously in making public the Enquirer’s threat to publish humiliating personal photos depicting him and his alleged girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, unless Bezos’ newspaper, the Washington Post, backs off on its reporting of alleged ties between David Pecker, the CEO of American Media Inc., the Enquirer’s parent company, and Saudi Arabia. It’s a sure bet that prosecutors will take a close look at the tabloid’s extortionate actions (especially now that New Yorker writer Ronan Farrow has come forward with a claim that AMI threatened to “ruin” him if he continued writing about the company’s connection to Donald Trump.) But Bezos can and should do more. He should sue the Enquirer and AMI for violating his privacy. He’s got the funds to bury them in litigation—and he’d probably win.
It mighty seem late in the day to be complaining about our collective loss of privacy, or to suggest that anything can be done to push back against it. The dominance of social media has so compromised our personal lives that it can be challenging — perhaps even a little strange — to think that there are still limits to what can be put out there without legal consequence. Past relationships that have ended badly are fodder for “revenge porn,” a horrid genre that mostly goes unchecked, and results in little accountability by authorities. Facebook has spread our information like a thick layer of vegemite, without anything that resembles true consent. And — let’s face it — we can find anyone we’re looking for in minutes.
But privacy is not quite dead. For egregious cases, there are remedies lying ready to hand in the civil law of torts, at least for the case that Bezos might want to bring against AMI. “Tort” comes from the French word for “wrong,” and constitutes a vast umbrella of protection, under state law, for those injured by the careless or intentionally bad actions of others. Most claims are for personal injury (auto accidents, medical malpractice, harms caused by defective products, and so on), but the law also protects against affronts to reputation and dignity.
More:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/08/jeff-bezos-national-enquirer-pecker-ami-photos-224932
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