New privacy tort won’t affect day-to-day operations
When it comes to the tort of intrusion upon seclusion articulated by the Court of Appeal earlier this year, Jim Downs, managing director of private investigative firm MKD International Inc. tells Law Times that he doesn’t think the new law will affect his day-to-day operations.
“Those regulations have been established for quite some time. Traditionally, the civil courts have always dealt with that, but before Jones v. Tsige, if you got private information as part of a civil action, the maximum damages would be $5,000. Now the civil courts have upped the ante on it a bit,” says Downs in Law Times.
Within his day-to-day operations, Downs says there is already a great awareness of restrictions imposed by privacy laws.
“We are always extremely careful not to go down this road, not with the court. We would never, and nor should any PI, expose ourselves to a possible action for breaching privacy,” he says.
“Out-of-facility video surveillance or information gleaned from third parties would also be deemed an invasion of privacy. They can’t be utilized for offering up as evidence but only as a good intelligence tool,” he adds. Read Law Times Story
