City of Malibu Explores Legal Options for Curbing Paparazzi

• Law Creating Personal Safety Buffer Zones Is under Consideration

BY ANNE SOBLE

While other cities have floundered in efforts to curb what is viewed as aggressive and invasive behavior by photographers who target celebrities, the City of Malibu is preparing to enter the legal fray.
The photographers, most of whom are freelance, are usually dubbed paparazzi, the plural of paparazzo (from the name of a character in the Fellini film “La Dolce Vita”).
They have come under increased public fire for engaging in unsafe behavior in public places, such as reckless driving and jostling people who block their shots.
At its quarterly goal-setting meeting last week, the city council approved efforts to frame a measure to address creation of “safety buffer zones” or other ways to protect people from endangerment or harassment.
Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich said the city’s approach could be to engage outside independent counsel that reflects all sides of the U.S. Constitutional issues “to draft and defend” an ordinance.
Conley Ulich said Ken Starr, dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law and the former Independent Counsel in the Clinton impeachment effort, who is currently representing Blackwater Security on alleged atrocities in Iraq, and Nadine Strossen, the president of the American Civil Liberties Union, have expressed interest in working on this at no charge to the city.
The pairing of these constitutional extremes (the ACLU recently published “Revisiting Our Rights”—a First Amendment treatise) prompted some raised eyebrows in the chambers.
Testifying on behalf of curbs on the paparazzi was Jolene Dodson, the self-described “celebrity assistant” for Pierce Brosnan. She relayed how Brosnan was eating lunch with a friend in a Malibu establishment a day earlier when “he was attacked by [paparazzi] who surrounded him.”
Dodson said Brosnan had to call the police. She said that establishments should hire security guards to protect people from paparazzi, then added, “We think the restaurant owners encourage [paparazzi]” to get publicity.
Mayor pro tem Andy Stern said, “It is certainly a threat.” The council unanimously agreed to make this a priority issue and ask City Attorney Christi Hogin to meet with these experts to see what ensues. Council members said they want any arrangements in writing.
City Manager Jim Thorsen reminded council members that First Amendment clashes have derailed most of the attempts to curb the paparazzi so far, adding with regard to Conley Ulich’s statement that the experts’ work would be “free” that there would be hidden staff time costs associated with any legislation that might be proposed.
The city manager indicated that his main concern is that whoever drafts a paparazzi regulation measure for Malibu “should agree to take on the [legal] defense of it.”