New yORK Lawsuit

[Marc Stern]

Today's NY Law journal reports on Nussenzweig v. di Corcia in which a
Hassidic Jew with religious objections to be photographed sued a
photographer who took a surreptitious picture of the plaintiff and sold
10 prints for between 20-30000 dollars. New York law permits artists to
use other persons images for artistic, but not for commercial, purposes.
The narrow question was whether the sale of a few copies of the picture
for substantial sums artistic or commercial. In the course of holding it
was the former, the court (according to the law journal) noted that New
York law favors freedom of artistic expression. For some reason, the
court thought it irrelevant to observe that the protection of those
first amendment rights came at the expense of other first amendment
rights that of the plaintiff to freely practice his faith without state
interference, here in the form of allowing the reproduction of his image
without his consent.

Marc Stern 

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