The Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court has confirmed the conviction of a woman who denounced in a report broadcast in 2017 on the TVE program ‘La Mañana’ that she could not sleep due to the noises related to her neighbour’s “sexual fierceness”.
The court dismissed the appeal filed by the woman who was sentenced, together with the Corporación Radiotelevisión Española, to jointly and severally pay compensation of 10,000 euro to the neighbour mentioned in the report, considering that this information implied an illegitimate interference with her rights of honour, privacy and one’s own image.
The neighbour mentioned in the report, which lasted about ten minutes, filed a lawsuit against TVE and the woman, alleging that the information disclosed that a young woman had been fined by the City Council for making noises that exceeded the permitted decibels. She noted that the journalist affirmed that the noises came from the bed of the neighbour upstairs, due to her nocturnal activity, which caused things to fall from the complainant’s shelf. In the report -according to the lawsuit- a woman appeared who complained that she could not sleep because of the “fierceness” of the bedroom antics of her upstairs neighbour, she showed the cracks in her house and explained that even the radiator vibrated, she gave details of the expressions that he heard; and the possibility of the practice of prostitution was pointed out.
A court in Salamanca dismissed the claim in which she requested compensation of 20,000 euros for illegitimate interference with his rights to honour, privacy and self-image. The court’s decision was based, among other reasons, on the fact that the expressions of the woman who appeared in the report about her neighbour were protected by freedom of expression.
The Provincial Court of Salamanca partially upheld the claim and sentenced TVE and the woman, in addition to paying the aforementioned compensation, to publish, at their expense, the ruling in La Gaceta de Salamanca, as well as to read it on the program in which it was broadcast or in another similar one that could have replaced it or, failing that, in the primetime newscast.
The appealed sentence understood that the information and expressions issued did not refer to matters of public relevance or general interest and that only morbidity made aspects of the intimate life of a person become news with repeated insinuations that the noises were related. with her sexual life, with suggestions of promiscuity and insinuations about whether she could engage in prostitution.
The Supreme Court considers that the judgment carried out by the Provincial Court, for which the right to honour and privacy of the respondent prevails over the freedom of expression of the appellant, is correct, and that the appeal filed by this must be dismissed.
In its ruling, a presentation by Judge Mª Ángeles Parra Lucán, indicates that, despite the fact that the appellant insists on the news nature of noise pollution, and that this is a matter of public interest and relevance, the Chamber shares the criteria of the sentence under appeal “when it affirms that the demonstrations are embedded in neighbourly relations, with little public relevance.”
“The appellant alludes to the private life of her neighbour, what she says she hears, the frequency with which she hears the noises and their intensity. Thus, in view of the proven facts, neither the report nor the appellant’s statements dealt with noise pollution, but rather with the noises allegedly produced by the appellant’s sexual activity, which directly becomes the news and object of the report”, emphasises the Chamber.
The judgment explains that, although it was legitimate for the appellant to denounce the annoying noises coming from the upper floor and for which the appellant was penalised, “it is not justified and it is disproportionate for her to air on a television program that the acoustic disturbances produced could come from the intense sexual activity of the plaintiff neighbour now appealed. Such statements, due to the way they were made, constitute an attack on both the privacy and the personal reputation of the plaintiff in such a way that they objectively cause her to be discredited.
On the other hand, it adds that with regard to the identification of the plaintiff, the appeal does not respect the factual account of the judgment under appeal which concludes, after analysing the data provided in the report that “… although when dealing with of a private character, she can obviously only be identified by people who know her. But, without a doubt, with the data offered, whoever knew ……. I would know, seeing the report, that it was about her ».
Finally, it rejects the appellant’s argument that she was limited to answering the questions that the journalist asked her since, as stated in the appeal judgment, the appellant actively participates in the report complaining about her neighbour’s fierceness, pointing as the cause of the cracks in her ceiling to the “wiggles that hit those above”, or saying that the radiator vibrates, and refers to expressions that he says she hears in such detail that the host of the program warns that It is being broadcast in children’s hours.
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