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Originally Posted by kate425  um correct me if i'm wrong, but aren't police reports public record, and can be requested by anyone? so those photos would have been able to have been procured in a legal manner anyway?
it's a truely tragic story, don't get me wrong, but the lawsuit doesn't make sense to me. |
First off, I saw those pictures and they made me want to vomit. I mean, seriously, those are beyond disturbing images.
Secondly, there is a valid point to the lawsuit...negligence. I know that people question how the CHP could be liable for their anguish but man, if I were in the family's shoes and receiving those pictures through email and texts, seeing a fake myspace page set up, and just KNOWING that people were out there swapping those pictures and basically getting off on the gore... that's plenty of unecessary anguish that could have been prevented. If CHP employees are emailing sensitive confidential pictures around their department and then those employees email them to external recipients- then there is definitely exposure for CHP. If CHP was aware this was going on or did not have reasonable safeguards in place to protect this sort of private information from being freely disseminated then they sure as f*ck can be and should be held responsible. This is the CHP, not some rinky dink operation in a small podunk town. The CHP can absolutely can be held to a higher standard of care. This is clearly different from a valid public records request. CHP operated in a negligent manner and these photos were not published following a records request (which would then place liability if any on the requestor).
IMO, I think its pretty twisted that the public can request crime scene photos and video. There are some sick f*cks out there who probably collect this sort of crap and that to me is not a valid use of the materials. The internet can be a scary place nowadays and the ability for citizens to access public records can be exploited and perverted by some twisted individuals.
I think the lawsuit is valid if it is based on this theory and not arguing that accessibility to public records violates a family's right to privacy or something. I agree that access to public records is a good thing but there should be some safeguards in place. In some cases, the law should not be so black and white. Some of the issues that arise here are that these materials can be extremely graphic and sensitive in nature, that some people are seeking to PROFIT off of them (some people post blogs about controversial stories for the sole purpose of driving traffic to their site so that peopel will click on their google ads etc.). IMO, there should be room for a balance between fair access and general human decency by either allowing the family to seal documents that fall into a certain pre-defiined category or having civil liability for those who use the materials in an absuive manner.