CASE DIGEST ON LAGUNZAD V. GONZALES

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CASE DIGEST ON LAGUNZAD V. GONZALES [92 S 476 (1979)] - An agreement whereby a film producer would pay the heirs and relatives of Moises Padilla a sum of money inorder to depict them in the movie which he included a love interest angle depicting the mother and a sweetheart, is not a violation of freedom of ex-pression. While it is true that the film producer purchased the rights to the book entitled "The Moises Padilla Story," that did not dispense with the need for prior consent and authority from the deceased's heirs to portray publicly episodes in said deceased's life and in that of his mother and the members of his family. As held in Schuyler v. Curtis, "a privilege may be given the surviving relatives of a deceased person to protect his memory, but the privilege exists for the benefit of the living, to protect their feelings and to prevent a violation of their own rights in the charac¬ter and memory of the deceased."
"Being a public figure ipso facto does not automatically destroy in toto a person's right to privacy. The right to invade a person's privacy to disseminate public information does not extend to fictional or novelized representation of a person, no matter how public a figure he or she may be. In the case at bar, while it is true that petitioner exerted efforts to present a true-to-life story of Moises Padilla, petitioner admits that he included a little romance in the film because without it, it would be a drab story of torture and brutality."
"The right of freedom of expression, indeed, occupies a preferred position in the hierarchy of civil liberties. However, it is limited by the clear and present danger rule and the balancing of interest test. The latter requires the court to take conscious and detailed consideration of the interplay of interest observable in a given situation. The interests observable in this case are the right to privacy and freedom of expression. Taking into account the interplay of those interest, we hold that under the particular circumstances presented, and considering the obligations in the contract, the validity of such contract must be upheld because the limits of freedom of expression are reached when expression touches upon matters of essentially private concern."


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