Legal Question in Personal Injury in Florida
A friend of mine has a home video of a celebrity (who has since passed away) phoning up his manager and reading him the riot act about his (then) manager faking love letters to the celebrity, pretending to be a girl the celebrity was in love with at the time. You see, during a call to his estranged wife, the celebrity finds out about the manager's goings-on, and then hangs up with the estranged wife to call up the manager. The celebrity then has to leave a voice mail, in which he tells the manager he found out, and that the mgr. is basically fired. This manager swears up and down to this day that he never faked/forged letters to the celebrity, pretending to be the girl the celebrity was in love with; this video proves otherwise. (This manager is also currently stating on his web site that he was a close friend of this celebrity; this too, is false, as proven in the video, therefore he is defrauding his web site visitors).
My question is this: if this video gets posted on YouTube, can the manager sue (whomever posts it) for libelous slander or defamation? After all, the video clearly states a true fact. Would the video be considered privileged information? In the video, the celebrity does say to the manager during the phone call, and I quote: "anything you sell from me [referring to the celebrity's merchandise/memorabilia] will be something I don't know about," therefore it would not necessarily be detracting from said manager's current business of selling this late celebrity's merchandise. The whole point of posting the video would be to prove to others that this ex-manager is NOT who he says he is and to not be fooled by him.
1 Answer from Attorneys
Why classify this as personal injury and tort law? This is intellectual property law.
1. Can the manager sue? A: Yes. Whether he can win is another story.
2. Would the video be considered privileged? A: No, unless there is a contract which states it is confidential and someone is in breach of that contract.
There are other issues here that you did not address. Such as copyright infringement, rights of publicity, and rights of privacy. In the abundance of caution, it may be better for you to just blog about what you know (stating facts) rather than posting a video on YouTube if you want to avoid a potentially costly adversarial situation.
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