Privacy suit vs. psychiatric researcher allowed by California high court

This has legal implications for other researchers as well. As seen in the Contra Costa Times

Researchers could be liable for damages if they obtain private information through false pretenses, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The case, which attracted widespread attention by media groups who urged the court to dismiss it, concerns a UC Irvine psychologist who published an article about a Solano County girl, who at 17 allegedly remembered she was sexually abused by her mother as a child.

The psychologist, Elizabeth Loftus, set out to investigate an article written by another scholar who suggested the anonymous girl had repressed memory. Through court records, Loftus learned the girl's identity and interviewed her foster mother in 1997.

That interview was the main topic of the 101-page, 5-2 decision by the state's high court allowing Loftus' subject, Elizabeth Taus, to sue her for invasion of privacy.

To secure the interview, according to the foster mother, the psychologist said she was the superior of a psychiatrist who had treated the girl and who had written the paper about her repressed memory. The foster mother said she never would have spoken with Loftus had she known that she was not affiliated with the treating psychiatrist.

Loftus is a critic of repressed memory, which says victims during therapy sometimes remember horrible events that they mentally had sealed off.

Among other things, the foster mother revealed to Loftus that Taus, now a Navy pilot, became promiscuous and started using drugs when she remembered her abuse as a child -- "the kind of very personal and potentially embarrassing or detrimental information as to which a person ordinarily would possess a reasonable expectation of privacy," Chief Justice Ronald George wrote for the majority.

The court ordered a trial on whether Loftus acquired the interview under false pretenses. No trial date has been set in Solano County Superior Court.

Loftus claims she never misrepresented herself, and the justices took no position.

A host of media groups had opposed the lawsuit, saying sources unhappy with coverage could claim that a reporter obtained the information from them by false pretenses.

The high court assuaged much of those concerns when it tossed the bulk of Taus' 2002 lawsuit against Loftus. The justices said the paper Loftus wrote was protected under the First Amendment and that Loftus did not violate Taus' privacy by using court records to paint a picture of her past.

Taus' attorney, Julian Hubbard, said he will pursue the case at trial on behalf of his client for "vindication of her right of privacy."

"This case is not about freedom of the press and those who seek to restrict it," Hubbard said in a statement. "This case is about someone who can use deception and fraud to obtain information about someone's private life."

Loftus' attorney, Thomas Burke, said his client did not misrepresent herself and said that would be shown at trial.