In an interesting decision from the small claims court of Quebec, Google has been held liable for violating the plaintiff’s privacy rights after an image of her sitting on her front steps appeared on Google Streetview.
In Grillo v. Google Inc., the plaintiff, Ms Grillo, testified that she had decided to sit on her front steps briefly one day, while on vacation. She was checking her messages on her smart phone, when she noticed the Google Car driving by, with its mounted camera. It was not until five months later that she first went online to look for her house on Streetview. She was shocked to see herself sitting barefoot and wearing a loose, sleeveless top which revealed part of one of her breasts. Also visible in the image was her car, with the licence plate unblurred, and the civic number of her house.
The plaintiff testified that she was a very private person, and, in fact, had chosen to live where she did because it was a relatively private and untraveled area of the city. After she found the image on Streetview, she testified that she was the butt of a number of jokes at the bank where she worked; her partially exposed breast was particularly commented upon by her co-workers. She testified as to her sense of shame and embarrassment. She immediately complained to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which suggested that she contact Google in order to have them remove the images. She claimed that she tried to do this, using the features available on the Streetview site, but without success. Shortly afterwards, she claimed to have sent two copies of a letter to Google – one to its offices in Washington D.C., and one to its corporate headquarters in California, setting out her concerns, and specifically requesting that her licence plate information be removed. Google claimed never to have received either copy of this letter. Approximately two years later, Ms Grillo sought the assistance of a lawyer, and sent a letter to Google demanding that “all photographs of our client, her breast, her car’s license plate and her civic address” be blurred or removed. The letter also claimed damages in the amount of $45,000. A short time after this letter was received, Google notified Ms Grillo’s lawyer that the images had been blurred.
Ms Grillo initiated a law suit against Google to recover damages related to the display of the images. However, perhaps because she was unrepresented at this point, she initiated her action in Quebec’s small claims court. Because this court has jurisdiction only over claims of $7000 or less, she limited her damage claim to this amount. In terms of the damages she claimed to have suffered, she noted that she had been mocked and humiliated at work, and had left her job at the bank as a result. She had also been on an extended period of sick leave prior to resigning her position – this was due to depression for which she was receiving care. She emphasized that she was a very private person who preferred her anonymity, and who had made choices about where to live and what kind of online activity to engage in (or not) with a view to this desire for privacy and anonymity.
The legal basis for the claim of violation of privacy rights in this case is found both in the Civil Code of Quebec and the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. The Civil Code sets out a right to privacy and identifies a series of acts that are considered to violate that right. One of these is the use of a person’s name or image without their consent for any purpose other than the legitimate information of the public. The Quebec Charter also sets out a right to privacy and to human dignity.
The leading case in Quebec on the right to privacy as it relates to the use of a person’s image is Aubry v. ÉditionsVice-Versa. In this case, the Supreme Court of Canada awarded damages after a magazine published a photograph of a young woman sitting outside on her front steps. The photograph had been taken without her knowledge or consent. Drawing on this decision, Justice Breault explained that a photograph taken of a person in a public space in Quebec could not be circulated without that person’s consent unless the public’s legitimate right to information prevailed over the right to privacy. He noted that in Quebec, the freedom of expression did not trump privacy rights; the two considerations must necessarily be balanced.
In this case, Google argued that Ms Grillo had been sitting on her front steps in plain view of her neighbors or of any passersby. Since she was in public view, it argued, she had no right to privacy. Justice Breault disagreed. He rejected the idea that there was a strict dichotomy between public and private spaces. In this case, he noted that Ms Grillo lived on a quiet street, and that the relative level of privacy on that street was something that was of importance to her. Further, she was not engaged in any sort of public activity: she was on vacation, sitting outside her home. She was entitled to expect that her privacy and her right to control her image would not be infringed by the taking and distribution of a photo without her consent.
Google also argued that Ms Grillo was not identifiable from the photograph because her face had been blurred. However, the court found that the other details in the photograph made her identifiable, and that these other details were, as a result, also “personal information”. Justice Breault noted in particular that the photograph showed her car licence plate, and her house number – details Google admitted had been missed by its blurring algorithm.
Finally, Google argued that the dissemination of the photograph without Ms Grillo’s consent could be justified as it was for the “legitimate information of the public”. In this respect, it argued that its Streetview service was of broad use and interest to the public. Justice Breault rejected “social utility” as a basis for justifying a breach of privacy. It was not enough to argue that Streetview in general served a useful public purpose; it was necessary to show that there was a dominant public interest in the circulation of the plaintiff’s image – an interest that would outweigh the plaintiff’s privacy interest. The court found that no such public interest existed in this case. Thus, Justice Breault concluded that the plaintiff’s right to privacy had been violated.
In considering the amount of damages to award, Justice Breault found that Ms Grillo had not adequately established the extent to which her image had actually been viewed by members of the public. He assumed that the number of viewers would be relatively low, and limited mainly to friends and co-workers. He also found that she had not established a causal relationship between the dissemination of her image on Streetview and the depression that she had suffered. He noted that she had produced no witnesses as to the state of her health. Justice Breault also found it significant that she had waited two years between the time she had discovered the image and the time that she had sent the lawyer’s letter to Google. He noted that the images had been blurred immediately after Google’s receipt of the letter, suggesting that she could have mitigated any harm she suffered by acting much sooner. Nevertheless, Justice Breault accepted that she had been deeply shocked by the publication of the image and that she had been hurt as well by the comments of her co-workers. He awarded her $2250 in damages, along with costs of $159.