Earlier details about the lawsuit are here, including a link to the complaint. In this post, I want to focus on the legal claims raised.
The plaintiff "Jane Doe" (who is, of course, suing for invasion of privacy, so is not using her name) has made four legal claims against Kipnis and her publisher: "Public Disclosure of Private Facts," "False Light Invasion of Privacy," "Defamation," and "Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress." Although the lawsuit is in federal court (since the defendants reside in a different state than the plaintiff), Illinois law governs (all these claims, or their cousins, are matters of state law in the U.S.). The Digital Media Project generally gives pretty good summaries of the law in relevant jurisdictions; I am a retired member of the New York Bar, but I do take an interest in these issues, given how often I am defamed, though, fortunately, to date, lawyer letters have usually sufficed. In any case, here are the DMP accounts of the relevant parts of Illinois law: publication of private facts; false light; defamation; intentional infliction of emotional distress (the latter is from an Illinois law firm, since DMP does not cover it).
I won't say much about the claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress; par. 95 of the complaint makes the best case for it. It does not seem to me likely that writing a book about the problems with Title IX proceedings, including using case studies, will qualify as "extreme" or "outrageous" conduct, and I imagine it will be difficult to establish the requisite intent on the part of Prof. Kipnis (the complaint suggests repeatedly that Kipnis was motivated to retaliate against Doe because of the [wrongful] Title IX claim she had filed against Kipnis, but whether they can back that up with evidence remains to be seen--but that might be enough for it to survive the motion to dismiss).
The complaint alleges (par. 75) that several private facts, that had not been part of the public record prior to the book, were disclosed, including Doe's prior relationship with a married man, intimate details of Doe's conversations and relationship with Ludlow, and information contained in confidential Title IX records connected to Northwestern's investigation of the allegations. (The latter is likely to be the subject of an independent Northwestern investigation for possible FERPA violations by Prof. Kipnis.) The biggest obstacle to plaintiff succeeding on this claim, I suspect, is that a court may find that these facts were, in fact, of public interest and newsworthy (the complaint contains the necessary denials of that at paragraphs 58 and 77)--not intrinsically newsworthy, of course, but because of their bearing on the fairness and reliability of the process that led to Peter Ludlow's resignation. The latter has itself been the subject of prior lawsuits and has garnered considerable media attention. Defendants will argue that the fairness of that widely publicized event is what makes these private facts newsworthy.
The "false light" and "defamation" claims are closely connected, though the scope of the former is somewhat broader than the latter. (The particulars of the former are described in par. 80 of the complaint, of the latter in par. 59). These claims face three main obstacles, I believe.
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