Pat Murphy, The Daily Record Newswire
A Wisconsin woman claims Joan Rivers should pay her for her 16-second cameo in a documentary about the iconic comedienne.
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Last week, the 7th Circuit decided that the woman’s claims for invasion of privacy and misappropriation of image didn’t have a leg to stand on.
“[W]e agree with the district court that no set of facts could exist consistent with the complaint that would allow these claims to survive,” wrote Circuit Judge David F. Hamilton in Bogie v. Rivers.
In February 2009, the plaintiff, Ann Bogie, attended a stand-up comedy show featuring Rivers at the Lake of the Torches Casino in Lac du Flambeau, Wis. During the performance, Rivers was heckled by a man who objected to a joke about Helen Keller. The heckler evidently had a deaf son.
After the performance, Bogie had the chance to meet Rivers backstage and get an autograph. The star and fan had a brief conversation during which the subject of the heckler came up:
Bogie: Thank you. You are so … I never laughed so hard in my life.
Rivers: Oh, you’re a good laugher and that makes such a difference.
Bogie: Oh, I know. And that that rotten guy. …
Rivers: Oh, I’m sorry for him.
Bogie: I was ready to get up and say … tell him to leave.
Rivers: He has a, he has a deaf son.
Bogie: I know.
Rivers: That’s tough.
Bogie: But he’s gotta realize that this is comedy.
Rivers: Comedy.
Bogie: Right.
The 16-second exchange was captured by a film crew. The piece was included in the comedienne’s highly touted documentary, “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.”
Bogie didn’t appreciate her appearance in the documentary, apparently concerned that she was portrayed as being insensitive to a father with a deaf son. So in 2011 she sued Rivers and the company that produced the documentary in state court. Bogie’s complaint asserted claims for invasion of privacy and misappropriation of image.
The defendants’ removed the state action to Wisconsin federal court. The district court without much ado dismissed the case for failure to state a claim.
Last week, the 7th Circuit agreed that Bogie’s lawsuit was something of a joke in its own right.
Regarding Bogie’s claim for invasion of privacy, the court first found that the fan had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the backstage area of the casino where she was
captured on film. Judge Hamilton explained:
“[Bogie] voluntarily approached a celebrity just after a public performance. Any reasonable person would expect to encounter some kind of a security presence, and indeed here that presence was visible. Furthermore, the camera crew must have also been visible to Bogie as they were filming both Rivers and, of course, Bogie.”
Further, Hamilton found that Bogie's privacy claim failed because the alleged intrusion would not be considered highly offensive to a reasonable person.
“The fact that Bogie was embarrassed to be filmed saying something she regrets having said and now deems offensive does not convert the filming itself into a highly offensive intrusion,” Hamilton wrote.
Bogie’s appropriation claim fared no better, with the judge citing a case in which a plaintiff failed to succeed in a similar lawsuit over a 45-second stage performance at Woodstock.
