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LETTERS
81/10/26: "Dream House, Time, at 4:
"I greatly enjoyed Lance Morrow's Essay "Downsizing an American
Dream" [Oct. 5]. While he recognizes the frustration of those who can't
afford the type of home their parents owned, he neglects the plight of those
whose parents were forced or chose to live in apartments. I am a
second-generation rent-paying apartment dweller who has reconstrued the
American dream to be a lofty one-bedroom, with Betamax and Jacuzzi,
overlooking the lights of midtown Manhattan.
"Lawrence Savell
New York City"
88/04/26: "'Right to Privacy,'" Manhattan Lawyer, at
13:
"To the Editor:
"As one who has studied and written on New York's right of privacy (see
Savell, 'Right of Privacy--Appropriation of a Person's Name, Portrait, or
Picture for Advertising or Trade Purposes Without Prior Written Consent:
History and Scope in New York,' 48 Albany Law Review 1-47 (1983)), I
wish to correct some inaccuracies in Leonard Marks' otherwise excellent April
12 article 'Granting Publicity Rights to Heirs Protects Performers' Privacy
Rights.'
"First, contrary to Mr. Marks' assertion (and that of the Court of
Appeals in the 1902 Roberson case), Warren and Brandeis titled their
seminal article (which was actually published in 1890) and the right it
advanced 'The Right To Privacy,' although in succeeding years the
'right of privacy' became the common expression of the concept used by
courts, legislatures, and commentators.
"Second, nowhere in the record or opinions in Roberson is there
any support for Mr. Marks' statement that, among the plaintiff's other
injuries, 'Abigail complained that she became . . . sore, lame,
[and] disabled'--although the equally legendary Mrs. Palsgraf may have
expressed such complaints.
Finally, the statement that '[w]ithin a year of the Roberson
decision, New York adopted the Civil Rights Law providing for a misdemeanor
(Sec. 50), injunctive relief and damages (Sec. 51)' is technically
inaccurate. While today the statutory protection is found in the
Civil Rights Law and in those cited sections, such protection was initially
enacted as 1903 N.Y. Laws chapter 132, with section 1 containing the language
of current section 50 and section 2 containing only the first sentence of
current section 51. The actual Civil Rights Law was not enacted until
1909 N.Y. Laws chapter 14. Moreover, while Mr. Marks is correct in
stating that '[t]he legislature was quick to respond,' it was apparently not
responding to the Roberson decision per se but to the resulting great
public sympathy for the plaintiff which led to a storm of professional and
popular disapproval reflected, among other ways, in a flurry of articles in
lay periodicals and law journals criticizing the court of appeals'
decision. Indeed, as reported in an unusual Columbia Law Review
article by Court of Appeals Judge Denis O'Brien, who had joined in and was
then defending the Roberson majority opinion, a prior bill aimed at
'prohibiting the use of pictures and photographs without the consent of the
person represented' had been viewed as 'the most unpopular bill that had made
its appearance in the legislature for many years,' resulting in its and its
authors' defeat.
"Lawrence Savell
Chadbourne & Parke"
93/06/29: "Cautionary Note On Wireless Systems," New York Law
Journal, at 2:
"I would like to add one cautionary note to Randolph J. Burkart's
informative article, "Jamming on the Airwaves as Legal Technology Gets
Mobile" (NYLJ, June 22). Lawyers using or contemplating wireless
communications systems and mobile data systems for transmitting sensitive and
confidential client data and information should keep in mind the potential for
such transmissions being intercepted or monitored by unauthorized third
parties. There may be ways to reduce the chance of such appropriation (such
as, for example, by encrypting the communication). But lawyers, entrusted with
keeping private matters private, need to be aware of the potential security
limitations of this developing technology."
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