Legal Issues Surrounding the "Royal Hoax" Call

There has been an enormous amount of publicity surrounding the Kate Middleton’s pregnancy. Unfortunately, there was something tragic that happened in England this past week. Two Australian radio announcers made a prank call to a British hospital where Kate was getting treated. Mel Greig and Michael Christian pretended to be the Queen calling to speak to Kate. The nurse, Jacintha Saldanha that spoke with the DJs was easily tricked by this prank phone call. Greig and Christian aired this phone call on the radio. This embarrassing call had gained attention from news sources all over the world.

Kate’s nurse was found dead after this prank call was aired last week. After further investigations, the police have concluded that Jacintha committed suicide. There are legal issues that are involved with this situation. Although the DJs will face Australian laws, there are similarities between the law in Australia and the US. One similarity is that it is a crime to record a phone call without the other person’s consent and knowledge. All parties to the call must consent to the recording, which is consistent with the laws in 38 states. The DJs as well as those individuals behind the scenes could face up to 5 years in prison for this.

The bigger legal issue is whether or not these two DJs could be held legally responsible for the death of this nurse. This would probably be a civil case of negligence. The nurse’s family would have to show that the death of this nurse was “reasonably foreseeable” given this prank phone call, which is a causation issue. As we learned in class, this can be very hard to show.

This link fully explains what happened. Lisa Bloom, a legal analyst, explains the legal issues surrounding the case in an interview on the Today Show this morning. 

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/10/15811889-djs-speak-out-say-theyre-heartbroken-over-death-of-nurse-in-royal-hoax-call?lite