22 Jun Privacy – Damages and apology for revenge porn pics of dead woman
The Sun has paid substantial damages and made a public apology to the family of a deceased grandmother over the publication of stolen topless pictures of her printed following the rejection of her lottery win claim in 2016.
Susanne Hinte, who died suddenly of a heart attack in August 2017, tried to claim a £33m lottery prize with a ticket that she said had been damaged in the wash. Camelot rejected her claim, but Hinte became a favourite with the tabloids, who gave her the nickname ‘Lotto Gran’.
In 2016 Hinte’s former friend Julie Howard sold topless pictures of Hinte to The Sun for £750, which then published the photographs on its website and in print in April 2016.
Howard admitted she obtained the pictures after Hinte had previously borrowed her phone and the images had been automatically saved in a cloud storage service. She told Police she had done it to humiliate Hinte after they fell out.
In January 2017 Howard was found guilty of disclosing private sexual images with intent to cause distress and received a fine and a six-week suspended sentence.
The newspaper claims it did not know the images it bought from her were stolen.
After Ms Hinte’s death, her daughter, Natasha Douglas, pursued a claim against News Group Newspapers, the publisher of the Sun, on behalf of her mother’s estate. The claim was for the misuse of private information, breach of confidence, copyright and data protection law and the distress that the article caused to Hinte.
Ms Douglas said: ‘I felt very strongly that it was important to continue this claim against The Sun on behalf of my late mother – not only because it’s what she would have wanted, but also to hold them accountable and make other people aware that it’s totally unacceptable to intrude into someone’s life as they did in this case.
‘Their actions caused a huge amount of pain – revenge porn is an awful thing, no matter who you are’.
NGN has not admitted liability,but settled for a five-figure sum. The statement in open court apologising to Ms Hinte’s family read as part of the settlement was the first in a privacy case for a deceased person.
It is a well-known principle of defamation law that the dead cannot sue for libel, since they cannot obtain vindication, and their relatives have no claim unless the words reflect on their reputations.
However, the position in privacy law is different. In particular, where proprietary rights such as copyright are involved, there may be a claim even where the individual is deceased at the time of the offending behaviour.
Both the IPSO and Ofcom codes in principle protect relatives of a deceased person against intrusions into grief or distress.
Similar rights were also in issue in a High Court claim against Facebook determined last week, in which the Court granted an Order that the company disclose the identity of a person who requested the deletion of the Facebook account of the claimant’s former partner. The claimant alleged that the deletion had interfered with her bereavement process and was an intrusion into her private and family life.
Although there are unlikely to be reputational issues relating to the deceased, both their rights and the rights of those close to them can be a difficult area in legal terms.