Court Gives Nikki Catsouras’ Family Right To Sue Patrol Officials
By shantanu, Gaea News NetworkSaturday, February 6, 2010
SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA (GaeaTimes.com)- An appellate court verdict has enabled the family members of Nikki Catsouras, who died in an accident four years ago, the right to proceed with their legal action against two California Highway Patrol officials for disclosing gruesome pictures of the car crash. The ruling which was furnished earlier this week is being perceived as a pioneering verdict to ensure the privacy rights of the family members of a deceased victim. The appellate court’s findings ruled out a lower court’s verdict which dismissed the lawsuit filed by the Catsouras family against the two highway patrol officials.
The California Highway Patrol has accepted that two of its officials, Thomas O’Donnell and Aaron Reich were responsible for sharing nine horrific pictures featuring Nikki Catsouras‘ corpse in the internet. The officers supposedly emailed the car crash photos to family and friends which also included a photo of the decapitated body of the 18 year old girl. The court’s ruling states that the pictures were then increasingly exchanged among internet users which gradually resulted in the photos spreading in various online portals like a wild fire. This was followed by the Catsouras family receiving emails from strangers who discovered the pictures on a number of online portals that highlighted pornography and ghastly images.
Nikki Catsouras was killed an a car crash on Lake Forest toll road on the day of Halloween in the year 2006. Following the accident, pictures of the remains of the teenager were available on around 2,500 websites. The family members of Nikki Catsouras went through a harrowing time after the pictures went viral as they were at the receiving end of taunting messages from internet users.
