The Mating Habits of the Suburban High School Teenager served as the headline for a Boston magazine

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“The Mating Habits of the Suburban High School Teenager” served as the headline for a Boston magazine article that addressed sexuality and promiscuity among teenagers in the Boston area. An accompanying subheading, which appeared in lettering smaller than that used for the headline, read this way: “They hook up online. They hook up in real life. With prom season looming, meet your kids they might know more about sex than you do.” According to the article, sexual experimentation had become increasingly common among high school students in recent years, with today’s teenagers being both “sexually advanced” and “sexually daring.” The author wrote that it had become common for “single boys and girls with nothing to do [to] go in a group to a friend’s house . . . drink or smoke pot, then pair off and engage in no-strings hookups.” Concerning the supposed prevalence of sexual promiscuity, the author quoted a teenager as saying that “everybody’s having casual sex and pretty much everybody’s doing it with multiple partners.” Throughout the article, the author included excerpts from her interviews with Boston-area students about their sexual experiences and views on sexuality. 

A large photograph accompanied the beginning portion of the article. The photograph, which took up a full page plus part of a facing page, showed five formally attired students standing near an exit door at a high school prom. Three students were smoking cigarettes, and a fourth was drinking from a plastic cup. The fifth student, Stacey Stanton, was looking in the direction of the camera with an apparently friendly expression. Her face and a portion of her body were readily visible. She wore a formal dress and was neither smoking nor drinking. Beneath the headlines and the article’s opening text, and on the same page as the large photograph, there appeared the following caption and disclaimer: “The photos on these pages are from an award-winning five-year project on teen sexuality by photojournalist Dan Habib. The individuals pictured are unrelated to the people or events described in this story. The names of the teenagers interviewed for the story have been changed.” Of the type sizes used on the page, the one used for the caption and disclaimer was the smallest. Other pictures that did not depict Stanton accompanied later portions of the article. Stanton, who was not named in the article, neither consented to the use of the large photograph nor participated in Habib’s “project on teen sexuality.” She sued Metro Corporation, the publisher of Boston magazine. According to her complaint, the juxtaposition of the large photograph and the article created the false impression that she was a person engaged in the activities described in the article. Therefore, Stanton contended that she had been the victim of defamation. Moreover, Stanton contended that the publication of the photograph amounted to an invasion of her privacy. The federal district court, however, ruled that Stanton had stated neither a valid defamation claim nor a valid invasion of privacy claim. Therefore, the court dismissed Stanton’s complaint. Stanton appealed. Did the district court rule correctly?

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Business Law The Ethical Global and E-Commerce Environment

ISBN: 978-1259917110

17th edition

Authors: Arlen Langvardt, A. James Barnes, Jamie Darin Prenkert, Martin A. McCrory

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