<p>romanigypsyeyes: “^ Dad made decision to have sex. Sex means that you can have kids.
Woman made a decision to dance in a bar. That does NOT mean that she gives consent for people to make money off of her naked chest. HUGE difference IMO.”</p>
<p>Uh, no. </p>
<p>Adults consent to have sexual intercourse. Consent to sexual intercourse is not consent to procreate children; using protection (e.g. a condom) is definitely an indication the parties did not agree to procreate children but if the condom breaks, hello parental responsibility. However, what 07DAD described about male parental responsibility does take place.</p>
<p>Using your logic, consent to enter a bar where GGW is filming may imply consent to be filmed in the nude, even if the nudity is accidental. In my world, GGW would have been out of business a while ago; in the legal world, GGW is a legitimate business that may profit from sexual assault, at least in this case.</p>
<p>Actually, I’m pretty sure GGW acts like it lives in your world, Enginox. As the article points out, it generally obtains explicit consent from women, either in writing or on video. From the corporate point of view, putting this shot into a video was almost certainly a screw-up – they sure don’t want to be placing too many $5 million bets that a jury will treat them as well as this one did! It was only when the screw-up had been made, and a lawsuit filed, and settlement attempts failed, that the company wound up in court with a lawyer arguing that what it did here was OK.</p>
<p>Unless one argues that consent to sex is consent to children; regardless of the condom. All the condom states is that the couple is wearing a condom – STD prevention, preference not to have children, etc.</p>
<p>So I don’t think that the separation of consent here is necessarily obvious or a given. One could make a strong claim that because sex is by nature procreative or can always (in cases where such a distinction would be relevant) lead to procreation, it is impossible to affirm consent to sex but not to the potential results, which I always find a blessing, but whatever.</p>
<p>The big question here is whether GGW even needed explicit consent at all. If I am walking down the street and get mugged, can someone put that clip on the internet without my consent? Can I ever get filmed without consent?</p>
<p>It may have been a corporate screw up BEFORE, but it looks brilliant now I bet. Implied consent to the rescue even if she is muttering no, no. That ruling (if it holds up) is WORTH more than $5 million to GGW.</p>
<p>The jury verdict was 11 to 1 for GGW. Looks like those 11 jurors thought $5 million might be greed rather than legitimate emotional distress. Sounds like tort reform in action.</p>
<p>I recall that there now is an exception to indecent exposure criminal liability for women breast feeding.</p>
<p>Weird world-- women’s breasts: (1) it’s assault if others touch or expose them, (2) indecent exposure if the woman exposes them herself in public–except (3) she has a right to expose them in public if she’s breast feeding.</p>
<p>So, forcing others in public to see a female breast is criminal because an exposed female breast is indecent, but not when it is in use? Weird.</p>
<p>And then I ask, why can news organization profit from my humiliation while a porn organization can not? I hate playing devil’s advocate, but both organizations are doing the same fundamental thing (i.e. transmitting information to an audience); the counter-argument could be that the news organization’s purpose is informational while the porn company is entertainment. At this point I ask, what kind of informational value does a video of me getting beaten up hold?</p>
<p>I could argue that a news organization does more harm than a porn organization. The news organization has a larger, wider audience while the porn company’s audience is more limited.</p>
<p>I don’t care if there were fifty GGW cameras there. She didn’t agree to being filmed with her clothes off.</p>
<p>on edit: Women who nurse in public choose to do so. No one forces a nursing mother to nurse her baby in public if she doesn’t want to. No one forces a nursing mother who is nursing in a public place to show her breasts-- she can use a shawl or wear a garment designed for discreet nursing if she wants to. If I were quietly nursing my baby in a park, I would not be consenting to have some stranger rip my shirt off and take a picture of me.</p>
<p>I repeat, you haven’t seen the video. What did she do after her shirt was pulled down? You may have noticed that her lawyer doesn’t say anything about that in his quotes.</p>
<p>This doesn’t answer the question of whether others, placed in the position of these jurors, would have made the same decision, but it gives a little more context.</p>
<p>Here’s something else relevant:
<a href=“404 Not Found”>404 Not Found;
Virginia requires written consent–apparently Missouri doesn’t.</p>
<p>If the jurors (1) disapproved of a 20 year old girl being in a bar where a “porn” company was known to be filming, knowingly dancing on camera without a bra and in a flirting manner and after having had a few and (2) thought that suing for $5 million, when she had to know the suit would only cause there to be more sales of the video with her in it, indicated she was more interested in the money than diminishing her embarassment by the “exposure”, they delivered their message loud and clear.</p>
<p>Thanks for the link Hunt. Here is what it said about implied consent</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Why the need to consider what might have been implied when a vocal declaration of “no” is issued? Why the need to resort to implications when a word that is very clear in its meaning has been stated? Nothing needs to be implied when a “no” has been said loud and clear and is on the film for everyone to see.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It was four years after the video was released before the plaintiff found out about it. The fact that she never looked for it means that it never occurred to her that they might use it. Why would she contact the cameraman or the company to not use her image if she didn’t think they would?</p>
<p>Again, what happened after her shirt was pulled down? Did she immediately cover up and object, or did she continue to dance? This isn’t mentioned in the articles. Who pullled down her shirt? Was it one of her own friends? How did she react?
A lot of the articles are wrongly indicating that the jury decided that consent was not required–what really happened is that the jury decided, based on the evidence they saw (which we haven’t seen) that she did give implied consent. I’d be surprised if the video showed a horrified, shocked person covering up and objecting after having her shirt pulled down. Under such circumstances, I would expect a jury to come down the other way (although they still might not give much in damages).</p>
<p>Interesting, that there are studies about the perception of whether “no” means “no” when it comes to consent and criminal conduct such as rape.</p>
<p>For those who don’t know, prospective jurors are required to give certain personal demographic information so that the attorneys can assess their proclivities. Also, there is a live screening process to ferret out cultural inclinations of the prospective jurors, before the actual members of the jury are selected. GGW may have done a better job in researching and selecting jurors that did not view “no” as necessarily meaning “no.”</p>
<p>Pea, here are the facts we know from the articles:</p>
<p>a. The young lady attended a party hosted by GGW.
b. The young lady was aware there were GGW cameras filming the party scene.
c. This young lady seemed to be “flirting with the camera”.
d. A 3rd party exposed the young lady’s breasts without the consent of the young lady.
e. GGW cameras filmed the alleged sexual assault, edited into a commercial video, profited.
f. 4 years later, the young lady sues GGW alleging “emotional distress” or a related charge.</p>
<p>The problem occurs between e and f. In any situation where personal information may be accessible to others, it is safer to assume that said information will be obtained by others. In this particular case, the young lady should have taken steps to ensure GGW would not use her image even if she thought GGW might not use it. Better safe than sorry.</p>
<p>Next, when did GGW release the video? If the video was released “shortly” (1-2 years?) after being filmed, then this lady had enough time to bring her case to court yet she failed to do so. If the video was released shortly before she went to court, then she might have more leverage. </p>
<p>It does not matter whether she was aware of the video’s existence nor when she initially became aware of the video’s existence. She knew she had her breasts filmed without her consent; she knew her private information was available to 2nd and 3rd parties. If she was emotionally distressed from the incident, the best time to mitigate or eliminate any additional damage was immediately after the incident took place. </p>
<p>Leaving that kind of decision to the good judgement of a 2nd and/or 3rd party, is bad judgement. Bad judgement is something this young lady seems to have shown since her initial decision to attend a Girls Gone Wild party.</p>
<p>I read somewhere that it was a friend. If so, I doubt she considered it to a sexual assault at the time - especially if it was a girlfriend and possibly a drunk girlfriend. The problem seems to be that the jury has to judge state of mind at the time of the incident, not today. Obviously, she feels differently now but they couldn’t factor that in.</p>