Victim pays for thief’s privacy

Press, 30 November 1978, Page 9

Victim pays for thief’s privacy

NZPA-Reuter | Alexandria, Louisiana A coin-laundry owner is probably going to have to pay damages to a man who stole from him now the United States Supreme Court refuses to enter the case. His lawyer says there is j not much "he can do about! it. The High Court has left! standing a Louisiana court’s ruling that Mr Brian King, in posting a photograph of the thief, violated the right of privacy of Michael Norris, aged 18.

| Norris’s photograph was’g taken by a security camera t Mr King installed in his 1 laundry in 1973 after a ‘ three-year string of rob- r 1 beries and vandalism. The r j camera recorded Norris [ stealing from a soda mach- f Hine’s cash-box one October I night in 1973. j ; ! Norris pleaded guilty in < '(November, 1973, to a mis- t J demeanour theft charge after, t [ the police confronted him < with the photographs. He was fined SUSIOO and given j : a suspended jail sentence. |j About five months later, 4 Mr King posted two photo- i

graphs of Norris on a bulle-! tin board at his laundry. They were headlined “Caught in the act,” and a message concluded: “Michael now has a police record.” Two weeks after his probationary sentence ended in late 1975, Norris sued Mr! King. Judge Martin Laird! ordered Mr King to remove the photographs in addition to paying Norris SUSSOO in damages. Mr King’s attorney, Mr, Bret Barham, said of the !High Court decision: “We| have the right, to petition [ for a rehearing. But court'

‘rules say you can't bring in the petition on frivolous reasons. You must have new ground, a new reason not considered in the past.” Mr Barham said he may [ have laid all his cards on | the table, exhausting any op-, (tions. ! Mr King said he would! not comment on the Supreme Court decision “until 1 receive formal notice of it.” He had claimed to be [protected by the First [(Amendment to the United (States Constitution, which .'guarantees free speech.