The plaintiffs were models in a fitness fashion show, featured as part of the Working Womens Survival
Question:
The plaintiffs were models in a “fitness fashion show,” featured as part of the Working Women’s Survival Show exhibition at a convention center in St. Louis, Missouri. B.P.S., doing business as Wells Fargo Guard Service, had contracted with the city to provide guards at the center. Security arrangements at the convention center included a number of television surveillance cameras scattered around the center, which were monitored on small screens in a central control room. The direction in which each camera was pointing could be adjusted manually or automatically in the control room. The control room also had a large screen that the guards could use to view the images from the cameras or to monitor what was being taped on the VCR. The purpose of having the VCR was to enable the guards to videotape suspicious activities. The Wells Fargo guards were told to practice taping on the VCR.
Promoters for the Working Women’s Survival Show had a makeshift curtained dressing area set up near the stage for the models in the fashion show. Unbeknownst to the models, the dressing area was in a location that could be monitored by one of the surveillance cameras. That fortuity was discovered by two Wells Fargo guards, Rook and Smith. Rook had the rank of captain at Wells Fargo, denoting supervisory capacity, though there was testimony that when he worked in the control room, he had no supervisory authority. Another supervisor with disputed supervisory authority, Ramey, walked by the control room and saw the guards using the large screen to view women in a state of undress. Ramey said that he thought the guards were watching pornographic tapes that they had brought to work. (There was testimony that the guards watched their own pornographic tapes in the control room.) Either Smith or Rook (each accused the other) focused the camera on the plaintiffs and taped them as they were changing clothes for the fashion show. Is Wells Fargo Guard Service liable for the unauthorized actions of its agents, even if those actions were done for reasons of personal pleasure rather than for work? [Doe v. B.P.S. Guard Service, Inc., d/b/a Wells Fargo Guard Service, 945 F.2d 1422 (8th Cir. 1991).]
