“The claim that a publication has given unwanted publicity to allegedly private aspects of a person’s life is one of the more commonly litigated and well-defined areas of privacy law.

The elements of the public disclosure tort:

1. public disclosure
2. of a private fact
3. that would be offensive and objectionable to the reasonable person and
4. which is not of legitimate public concern.”

Diaz v. Oakland Tribune, Inc. (1983) 139 Cal.App.3d 118, 126; see also, Jackson v. Mayweather (2017) 10 Cal.App.5th 1240, 1256 citing Taus v. Loftus (2007) 40 Cal.4th 683, 717.

The absence of any one of these elements is a complete bar to liability. Shulman v. Group W Productions, Inc. (1998) 18 Cal.4th 200, 214-215.

“With respect to the fourth element, the "newsworthiness" is a complete bar to liability for publication of truthful information.” Jackson v. Mayweather (2017) 10 Cal.App.5th 1240, 1256. Newsworthiness can be determined by the court by balancing the public’s right to know against the plaintiff’s privacy interest at the point where “the material revealed ceases to have any substantial connection to the subject matter of the newsworthy report.” Id.

Private Matters Already Made Public

“As noted above, a crucial ingredient of the applicable invasion of privacy cause of action is a public disclosure of private facts. A matter that is already public or that has previously become part of the public domain is not private.” Moreno v. Hanford Sentinel, Inc.(2009) 172 Cal.App.4th 1125, 1130 citing Sipple v. Chronicle Publishing Co. (1984) 154 Cal.App.3d 1040, 1047 (discussing whether an author who posts an article on MySpace.com can state a cause of action for invasion of privacy and/or intentional infliction of emotional distress against a person who submits that article to a newspaper for republication.)

In Moreno, the court held that “;[p]rivate is not equivalent to secret.... ‘[T]he claim of a right of privacy is not “so much one of total secrecy as it is of the right to define one’s circle of intimacy— to choose who shall see beneath the quotidian mask.” Information disclosed to a few people may remain private.’.... By posting the article on MySpace.com, [appellant] opened the article to the public at large. Her potential audience was vast.” Moreno v. Hanford Sentinel, Inc.(2009) 172 Cal. App. 4th, 1125, 1130 (citations omitted).

Public Interest and “Newsworthiness”

Although “legitimate public interest does not include ‘a morbid and sensational prying into private lives for its own sake’” Shulman v. Group W Productions, Inc. (1998) 18 Cal.4th 200, 224, the protection accorded the right to disseminate truthful information by both the common law and the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression “‘appl[ies] with equal force to the publication whether it be a news report or an entertainment feature...’ Thus, newsworthiness is not limited to ‘news’ in the narrow sense of reports of current events. ‘It extends also to the use of names, likenesses or facts in giving information to the public for purposes of education, amusement or enlightenment, when the public may reasonably be expected to have a legitimate interest in what is published’” Id. at 225-226 (“[i]ntensely personal or intimate revelations might not, in a given case, be considered newsworthy, especially where they bear only slight relevance to a topic of legitimate public concern”).

“[A]ctionable invasions of privacy must be sufficiently serious in their nature, scope, and actual or potential impact to constitute an egregious breach of the social norms underlying the privacy right.” Rosales v. City of Los Angeles (2000) 82 Cal.App.4th 419, 429; see also Hill v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn. (1994) 7 Cal.4th 1, 27 (“common law invasion of privacy by public disclosure of private facts requires that the actionable disclosure be widely published and not confined to a few persons or limited circumstances”).