Business Law: Principles for Today's Commercial Environment 3rd Edition by Marianne Moody Jennings, David Twomey, Marianne Jennings

Exercise 14

Following a visit to her hometown of Coalinga, Cynthia wrote "An Ode to Coalinga"(Ode) and posted it in her online journal on MySpace.com. Her last name did not appear online. Her page included her picture. The Ode opens with "The older I get, the more I realize how much I despise Coalinga" and then proceeds to make a number of extremely negative comments about Coalinga and its inhabitants. Six days later, Cynthia removed the Ode from her journal. At the time, Cynthia was a student at UC Berkeley, and her parents and sister were living in Coalinga. The Coalinga High School principal, Roger Campbell, submitted the Ode to the local newspaper, the Coalinga Record, and it was published in the Letters to the Editor section, using Cynthia's full name. The community reacted violently to the Ode, forcing the family to close its business and move. Cynthia and her family sued Campbell and the newpaper on the right-of-privacy theory of public disclosure of private facts. What are the essential elements of this theory Were Cynthia and her family's rights of privacy violated [Moreno v Hanford Sentinel, Inc., 91 Cal Rptr 3d 858 (Cal App 2009)]