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No Right Privacy In Public

By Amy E. Feldman

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - If you should find your picture on an unflattering but non obscene website, who can you sue?

A website called PeopleOfWalmart.com which has garnered over a million hits, posts pictures of actual walmart shoppers' fashion disasters, among them many showing pictures from people who apparently don't own mirrors. Or properly fitted undergarments.

What can you do if you find your picture there or on other mean-spirited or fashion disaster type websites? Not much.

If the website had taken pictures in a hotel room, then the people pictured might have a claim for invasion of privacy. But where grown men have willingly gotten mullets, or dressed up in their best tank top and high heels and walked in the public place that is a Walmart, they have no legal expectation of privacy (although people will tend to leave them alone, no doubt), so there is no one to sue but your barber.

You can contact the site and ask them to remove it, but the bottom line for people is to remember that when you are out in public, you should expect people to see you so if that means not wearing tiny pink hot pants (yes, sir, I'm talking to you), so be it.

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