Posted on 12/03/2003 6:31:33 PM PST by hotpotato
A JUDGE today threw out a $US10 million lawsuit brought by superstar Barbra Streisand against an amateur photographer who snapped her cliff-top mansion from the air.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Allan Goodman dismissed the notoriously private diva's invasion of privacy suit, ruling that her action infringed on the right to freedom of speech.
Software millionaire and photographer Ken Adelman said he was "ecstatic" that the suit filed against him and his wife Gabriella in May had failed.
"It was a clean sweep,"he said.
Adelman said he and his wife had taken pictures of Streisand's home that overlooks the coast at Malibu, near Los Angeles, from a helicopter while cataloguing the erosion of California's coastline.
The couple said the picture of the home was just one among 12,000 images of the coast that they posted on their website as part of the survey and had asked the judge in July to throw out the case.
Streisand had sued claiming the posting of the picture on the Internet put her privacy and security at risk and her attorney branded Adelman a "peeping tom".
The singer, actress and producer claimed the picture revealed details of the house that could not be seen from a public vantage point and said she had gone to great lengths to protect her home from prying eyes.
On her website, barbrastreisand.com, she admitted she was "thin-skinned", but said: "We live in a country where all people are supposed to have equal rights ... we have to be vigilant to protect those rights."
Adelman's attorney, Richard Kendall, had told the court in July that the star's suit "chills (Adelman's) free speech" rights and said Streisand should be accustomed to such behaviour.
"For much of her life, Streisand has made herself, quite aggressively, a public figure," he said. "This isn't a case of someone saying, 'Barbra Streisand, $US15.95 dollars, come and get it," he added.
Streisand, 61, who is married to actor James Brolin, has been a major star since the 1960s and is known for such films as 1968's Funny Girl and the 1970s' pictures The Way We Were with Robert Redford and A Star is Born
But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Allan Goodman on Wednesday ruled that the diva's lawsuit chilled Adelman's free speech rights on a matter of public concern, and ordered the "Yentl" star to pay his legal bills.
The judge noted that Adelman had not tried to photograph Streisand personally and had not even known that he was capturing her estate on film when he snapped the photos from 2,700 feet (820 metres) away.
Goodman also noted that similar photos were published in magazines and on the Internet before Adelman took his aerial shots.
Streisand's attorney could not immediately be reached for comment. In a message posted on his Web site, Adelman said the ruling sends a message to "a celebrity who believes her personal interests are more important (than) the public's constitutional right to free speech." Adelman, 40, retired after selling his TGV software company to Cisco Systems for $115 million in 1996 and Network Alchemy to Nokia for $335 million four years later. He and his wife then began an aerial photography survey of the 1,150-mile (1,850-km) California coastline using his helicopter and a high-resolution camera.
Nice house, but lots of erosion....
True, looks like the place won't be there for more than 50-75 years. It looks ready to slide in now.
Yep. I sure do. Check out Adelman's "offending" website at http://www.californiacoastline.org
The real kicker in this is that he and his wife were doing this for environmental purposes.... supposedly a cause near and dear to Bab's heart.
Nice kick in the teeth, for The Schnoz: first The Reagans gets taken off of See-B.S., and now this.
............Nice House...............................Lots of erosion
Lots of erosion...
I think her response would be similar to Arianna Huffington's when confronted with the fact that she travels in private jets and limos.... "well... I'm only using what is going to exist anyhow...." It's part of what defines them as the elitists that they are. Why the "little people" don't see it is beyond me.
The ONLY cause near and dear to Bab's heart -- is her own fat ass...
The communist, lame brained America hating hag needed this bitch slap...
Semper Fi
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