No. 14-5123
Huff, et al. v. Spaw
Page 14
the Huffs’ approximately 15-minute conversation in the hotel room, Bertha Huff exposed her
statements only to her husband, who in turn inadvertently caused some of those statements to be
intercepted by Spaw. James Huff discovered that he had made a pocket-dial approximately
89 minutes into a 91-minute call and told his wife that “my phone is on.” To the extent that
Bertha Huff understood this statement to mean that James’s phone was still connected to another
phone, she would have exposed her statements in the apparent final two minutes of the call to
any outsider on the other end of the call and therefore would not have enjoyed a reasonable
expectation of privacy with respect to only those statements. As to statements Bertha Huff made
prior to this two-minute window, her awareness that her husband may have been carrying an
interception-capable device—i.e., an iPhone—did not displace her expectation of privacy.
We held in Boddie v. American Broadcasting Company Inc. that someone who
knowingly converses with a person who may be carrying an interception-capable device can
nonetheless enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy from interception. 731 F.2d 333, 338–39
(6th Cir. 1984). Boddie agreed to an interview with a TV reporter but refused to give consent to
being recorded. Id. at 335. The reporter nonetheless secretly recorded the conversation, and
Boddie sued under Title III. Ibid. In reversing the district court’s summary judgment for the
defendant, we held that, although “Boddie was aware that she was speaking to a reporter from
ABC,” “it remain[ed] an issue of fact for the jury whether Boddie had an expectation that the
interview was not being recorded and whether that expectation was justified under the
circumstances.” Id. at 338–39. In reaching this conclusion, we noted that there are “some
circumstances where a person does not have an expectation of total privacy, but still would be
protected by [Title III] because he was not aware of the specific nature of another’s invasion of
his privacy.” Id. at 339 n.5 (emphasis added). Similarly, we do not require Bertha Huff to
exhibit an expectation of total privacy—e.g., by searching her husband and forcing him to turn
off his phone—in order to be protected under Title III. Because Bertha Huff made statements in
the privacy of her hotel room, was not responsible for exposing those statements to an outside
audience, and was (until perhaps the final two minutes) unaware of the exposure, she exhibited
an expectation of privacy.
Sélectionner le paragraphe cible3
Se connecter à un paragraphe
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Ajouter à la table des matières