Invasion of Privacy Case
In 1943, Rawlings faced a libel suit for her book Cross Creek by her friend Zelma Cason, whom Rawlings met the first day she moved to Florida. Cason had helped to soothe the mother made upset by her son's depiction in Jacob's Ladder. Cason claimed Rawlings made her out to be a "hussy". Rawlings had assumed their friendship was intact and spoke with her immediately. Cason went ahead with the lawsuit seeking $100,000 US for invasion of privacy (as the courts found libel too ambiguous).It was a cause of action that had never been argued in a Florida court.
Rawlings used her Cason's last name in the book, but described her in this passage:
Zelma is an ageless spinster resembling an angry and efficient canary. She manages her orange grove and as much of the village a county as needs management or will submit to it. I cannot decide whether she should have been a man or a mother. She combines the more violent characteristics of both and those who ask for or accept her ministrations think nothing at being cursed loudly at the very instant of being tenderly fed, clothed, nursed, or guided through their troubles.
Cason was represented by one of the first female lawyers in Florida, Kate Walton. Cason was reportedly profane indeed (one of her neighbors reported her swearing could be heard for a quarter of a mile), wore pants, had a fascination with guns, and was just as extraordinarily independent as Rawlings herself.
Rawlings won the case and enjoyed a brief vindication, but the verdict was overturned in appellate court and Rawlings was ordered to pay damages in the amount of $1 US. The toll the case took on Rawlings was great, in both time and emotion. Reportedly, Rawlings was shocked to learn of Cason's reaction to the book, and felt somewhat betrayed. After the case was over, she moved away from Cross Creek and never wrote about it again, despite the fact that Cason and Rawlings eventually mended their friendship.
Read more about this topic: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Famous quotes containing the words invasion of, invasion, privacy and/or case:
“In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of government contrary to the sense of the constituents, but from the acts in which government is the mere instrument of the majority.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with the National Militia, and under the provision of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of President Monroe.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.”
—Sir Edmund Leach (20th century)
“Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)