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Teen Loses Suit Over Use of Photo With Sex Article

A teenager failed to show that a magazine defamed her or invaded her privacy when it used her photograph to illustrate an article about teenage promiscuity, a federal court in Boston has ruled.

U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor said he struggled with the situation in this case, expressing sympathy for the plaintiff's position and commenting extensively on the "troubling" fact that the subject of the photograph was a teenager, not a full-fledged adult. Compared with adults, he said, teenagers are more easily embarrassed or humiliated.

However, the judge said, no case law suggests that "the unique vulnerability of teenagers (or children) provides them any additional protection under the law of defamation. Although that seems somewhat anomalous, given the greatly heightened legal protection provided to minors in other contexts, there appears to be no authority supporting a contrary position."

Judge Saylor also took the magazine to task for displaying "dubious judgment" in running the photograph with a caption citing the "five-year project on teen sexuality."

"The exercise of dubious judgment, however, is not the same as the commission of the tort of defamation," he said.

Plaintiff Stacey Stanton's lawsuit centers on an article Boston magazine published in May 2003 with the headline, "The Mating Habits of the Suburban High School Teenager." The article said the author based her story on recent studies of teenage sexuality, months of interviews with students, and statistics on teenage sexuality and substance abuse.

Stanton took issue with the fact that the article included a large photograph of her with four other students at a high school prom. Although Stanton was not mentioned anywhere in the article and the magazine's disclaimer included a statement that "the individuals pictured are unrelated to the people or events described in this story," Stanton claimed the juxtaposition of the photograph and the article "insinuated she was a person engaged in the activity described in the article."

Her suit alleged defamation and invasion of privacy, and Judge Saylor found both claims legally deficient.

Although Massachusetts courts have recognized a cause of action for intrusion into a person's "private sphere," state law does not recognize a cause of action for "false light" invasion of privacy, the judge said. Here, the plaintiff's failure to allege revelation of any private information doomed her privacy claim, he explained.

As for the defamation claim, the judge concluded that the defendant's disclaimer negated any defamatory connotations about the plaintiff, even though she was clearly identifiable in the photograph, the article contained potentially defamatory statements, and the juxtaposition of the article and photograph suggested that the plaintiff is sexually active.

He said that, although the disclaimer appears in the smallest font on the page, it directly contradicts the otherwise defamatory connection between the photograph and the text, it is not buried in "an ocean of fine print," and it appears on the first page of the article near the headlines and lead photograph.