Dehe Case | "Phoenix Weekly Sues Zhang Lan for Privacy and Reputation Disputes" Wins Final Appeal
Recently, Deng Gaojing and Yu Yong'er lawyers from Shanghai DHHT Law Firm, acting on behalf of Shenzhen Fenghuangxing Cultural Industry Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Fenghuang Weekly"), successfully concluded the "Zhang Lan v. Fenghuang Weekly Privacy and Reputation Dispute Case". The Beijing Fourth Intermediate People's Court rejected Zhang Lan's appeal and upheld the original judgment, and Fenghuang Weekly won the final appeal.
This case focuses on the boundary between the protection of public figures' personality rights and media news reporting. The court made a judgment based on issues such as whether the reported content had public interest attributes, whether the media fulfilled the necessary fact verification obligations, and the tolerance obligation of public figures for reasonable news comments. This provided a reference-worthy judicial judgment for related disputes.
Privacy and Reputation: Court Opinion
In this case, the relevant reports published by Fenghuang Weekly involved Zhang Lan's public words and deeds on social media platforms and related disputes, leading to a lawsuit between the two sides regarding the boundary of privacy and reputation protection.
The court held: In this case, Zhang Lan repeatedly discussed Xu Xiyan's relationship, marriage, divorce, children's life, health condition, and consumption records on her live streaming platform, causing content that belonged to the private space of the family to become a hot topic in society and further drawing widespread attention from the public regarding the litigation progress of related cases. Therefore, based on Zhang Lan's public behavior, her claimed private situation that she did not want others to know eventually fell within the reasonable knowledge scope of the public. Zhang Lan should have tolerated this. The above-mentioned reported content by Fenghuang Weekly objectively met the value orientation of social supervision and was consistent with the content of the judicial ruling and the ruling made by the judicial authority. It did not involve Zhang Lan's personal information. Therefore, Fenghuang Weekly's above actions did not constitute fault and did not violate the law. The infringement of Zhang Lan's privacy rights by Fenghuang Weekly was not supported by this court.
The court held: First, the reported content by Fenghuang Weekly was related to the public figures' words and deeds on social media platforms, especially the content about the public figures' use of online accounts for marketing and promotion, which was related to the public interests of maintaining the social environment. This was an act of news reporting for public interests. Second, based on the screenshots of Zhang Lan's speech video, the relevant news reports about the freezing of Qiao Nan's assets, the media coverage of Da S publicly presenting Wang Xiaofei's autographed note, the (2019) Jing 03 Zhixing 516 execution ruling, the other case's behavior preservation ruling, the screenshots of the video related to "Wang Xiaofei's plane to pick up Da S", and the screenshots of Zhang Lan's indefinite account suspension, it can be determined that Fenghuang Weekly had conducted sufficient investigation and verification of the basic facts when implementing the news reporting. Although some of the words used were relatively sharp and had exaggerated components, the reported content had corresponding factual basis, and did not use insulting language. As a public figure, Zhang Lan should tolerate the comments in the above news reports. Therefore, Zhang Lan's claim that Fenghuang Weekly infringed upon her reputation rights lacked factual and legal basis and was not supported by this court.
This case was reported and commented on by media such as The Paper and Observer Network. Relevant reports believed that one of the highlights of this case was that the court "reaffirmed the tolerance obligation of public figures" and considered that with the issuance of the first and second instance judgments, the boundary between the privacy and reputation rights of celebrities was further clarified, "media supervision rights based on investigation and verification have been guaranteed."
This case went through the first and second instance, and Deng Gaojing and Yu Yong'er lawyers, based on the core disputes of the case, with solid professional capabilities and rigorous litigation strategies, obtained a comprehensive victory for the client. The case judgment result was also of public concern. DHHT Law Firm Lawyers will continue to uphold the principles of "diligence, craftsmanship, and excellence", using professional capabilities to fulfill the clients' requests and providing them with high-quality legal services.
