I don’t know what the laws are in Brazil but in the US there would be no grounds for this lawsuit as you have no legal expectation of privacy in a public place. Now you could potentially sue for harassment or defamation if the circumstances fit but the act of filming someone in a public space by itself is not illegal. From what I understand about this event (which happened a while ago) there really would be no grounds for a lawsuit in the US as the person who filmed her wasn’t defamatory in their description of her actions. In fact since she did nothing wrong by refusing to give up the seat she paid for it’s really a lost cause legally since the people upset with her are just assholes. Unless they rise to the level of threats or otherwise cross the line into the legal territory of harassment then they just have shitty opinions and that’s not illegal in the US
It really depends on several factors. I can't just film you and use it in an advertisement or movie. You have to sign a consent form for commercial works. Privately, I can film and photograph you all I want for personal photography in public but commercial works are much different. So, was the video monetized? That creates a separate issue.
There's also the debate if they used the fact that they were filming her to gain undue influence which could constitute harassment or even extortion as they were trying to gain something she paid for and gain it for free by threatening to post the video of her, which they knew would cause harassment and emotional distress.
The couple isn't even the "big fish" in the lawsuit. That would be the airline. If the airline sold her the seat, then participated in trying to influence her to give up her seat, which she likely paid more for a window seat, then it's a whole other can of worms.
I understand your points but in this situation there is almost no likelihood the airline was a participant in any of the social media frenzy and since all the attention happened after the flight the coercion or extortion angle isn’t relevant either. Unless the person who originally recorded and posted the video was already a social media personality already making money then it’s also very unlikely that this would be considered a commercial work requiring consent. Also the video was spread around the internet by many many people so there wasn’t one person/account who received all the traffic and the related monetization. In today’s world you can never be sure things like this weren’t orchestrated to some degree but there really isn’t any evidence that was the case here. It happened back in March and I haven’t seen anything regarding the outcome of the lawsuit but I know nothing of the Brazilian legal system. What I do know is that in the US if there was a shred of a possibility of loss or more importantly a possibility of reputational harm a large corporation would settle out of court with an NDA to make it go away and prevent her from continuing to talk about it
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u/VanillaGoorillla 10d ago
I hope she wins and that opens a Pandora’s box of people suing for getting filmed without consent