06 Dec Covertly taken photographs of new mother and her baby breached privacy rights

In the case of Dupate v. Latvia (application no. 18068/11, 19.11.2020) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights. 

The case concerned surreptitiously taken photos of the applicant leaving a maternity ward and their subsequent publication with an accompanying article. At the time of the events in question, the applicant was a lawyer and her partner was the chairperson of a political party and the face of an advertising campaign for Privātā Dzīve, a nationally available celebrity-focused magazine. 

The Court agreed with the domestic courts that the applicant, as the partner of a public figure, should have expected to be mentioned in the media as the child’s mother. However, it asserted that the article in question went well beyond what could reasonably have been expected.

In the present case, the domestic courts had failed to make a distinction between relaying the information about the birth of the child and the publication of the covertly taken photographs depicting the applicant in a private moment – leaving hospital after giving birth. 

The Court also found that the applicant’s and her partner’s prior and subsequent appearances in the media, which may have involved lesser interferences with their privacy, had not turned the birth into a public event. Nor, indeed, did they excuse the particular encroachment on the applicant’s privacy. 

The Court emphasised that although the applicant had not been depicted in a humiliating manner, the article had been a “photo story”, with the text of secondary importance. The shots had been taken covertly, in a situation the applicant could not practicably have avoided – traversing the hospital car park – and she had been followed to her home. The domestic courts had failed to analyse these factors. 

As such the Court found that although the domestic courts had engaged in a balancing exercise, they had failed to do so sufficiently or in line with the Court’s case-law. There had therefore been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention.

References from the official website of the European Court of Human Rights