Full opinion text
Opinion WERDEGAR, J. More than 100 years ago, Louis Brandéis and Samuel Warren complained that the press, armed with the then recent invention of “instantaneous photographs” and under the influence of new “business methods,” was “overstepping in every direction the obvious bounds of propriety and of decency.” (Warren & Brandéis, The Right to Privacy (1890) 4 Harv. L.Rev. 193, 195-196 (hereafter Brandéis).) Even more ominously, they noted the “numerous mechanical devices” that “threaten to make good the prediction that ‘what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops.’ ” (Id. at p. 195.) Today, of course, the newspapers of 1890 have been joined by the electronic media; today, a vast number of books, journals, television and radio stations, cable channels and Internet content sources all compete to satisfy our thirst for knowledge and our need for news of political, economic and cultural events—as well as our love of gossip, our curiosity about the private lives of others, and “that weak side of human nature which is never wholly cast down by the misfortunes and frailties of our neighbors.” (Id. at p. 196.) Moreover, the “devices” available for recording and transmitting what would otherwise be private have multiplied and improved in ways the 19th century could hardly imagine. Over the same period, the United States has also seen a series of revolutions in mores and conventions that has moved, blurred and, at times, seemingly threatened to erase the line between public and private life. While even in their day Brandéis and Warren complained that “the details of sexual relations are spread broadcast in the columns of the daily papers” (Brandéis, supra, 4 Harv. L.Rev. at p. 196), today’s public discourse is particularly notable for its detailed and graphic discussion of intimate personal and family matters—sometimes as topics of legitimate public concern, sometimes as simple titillation. More generally, the dominance of the visual image in contemporary culture and the technology that makes it possible to capture and, in an instant, universally disseminate a picture or sound allows us, and leads us to expect, to see and hear what our great-grandparents could have known only through written description. The sense of an ever-increasing pressure on personal privacy notwithstanding, it has long been apparent that the desire for privacy must at many points give way before our right to know, and the news media’s right to investigate and relate, facts about the events and individuals of our time. Brandéis and Warren were themselves aware that recognition of the right to privacy requires a line to be drawn between properly private events, words and actions and those of “public and general interest” with which the community has a “legitimate concern.” (Brandéis, supra, 4 Harv. L.Rev. at p. 214.) As early as 1931, in the first California case recognizing invasion of privacy as a tort, the court observed that the right of privacy “does not exist in the dissemination of news and news events.” (Melvin v. Reid (1931) 112 Cal.App. 285, 290 [297 P. 91].) Also clear is that the freedom of the press, protected by the supreme law of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, extends far beyond simple accounts of public proceedings and abstract commentary on well-known events. “The guarantees for speech and press are not the preserve of political expression or comment on public affairs, essential as those are to healthy government. One need only pick up any newspaper or magazine to comprehend the vast range of published matter which exposes persons to public view, both private citizens and public officials. Exposure of the self to others in varying degrees is a concomitant of life in a civilized community. The risk of this exposure is an essential incident of life in a society which places a primary value on freedom of speech and of press.” {Time, Inc. v. Hill (1967) 385 U.S. 374, 388 [87 S.Ct. 534, 542, 17 L.Ed.2d 456].) Thus, “[t]he right to keep information private was bound to clash with the right to disseminate information to the public.” {Briscoe v. Reader’s Digest Association, Inc. (1971) 4 Cal.3d 529, 534 [93 Cal.Rptr. 866, 483 P.2d 34, 57 A.L.R.3d 1].) Despite, then, the intervening social and technological changes since 1890, the fundamental legal problems in defining a right of privacy vis-á-vis the news media have not changed—they have, if anything, intensified. At what point does the publishing or broadcasting of otherwise private words, expressions and emotions cease to be protected by the press’s constitutional and common law privilege—its right to report on matters of legitimate public interest—and become an unjustified, actionable invasion of the subject’s private life? How can the courts fashion and administer meaningful rules for protecting privacy without unconstitutionally setting themselves up as censors or editors? Publication or broadcast aside, do reporters, in their effort to gather the news, have any special privilege to intrude, physically or with sophisticated photographic and recording equipment, into places and conversations that would otherwise be private? Questions of this nature have concerned courts and commentators at least since Brandéis and Warren wrote their seminal article, and continue to do so to this day. In the present case, we address the balance between privacy and press freedom in the commonplace context of an automobile accident. Plaintiffs, two members of a family whose activities and position did not otherwise make them public figures, were injured when their car went off the highway, overturning and trapping them inside. A medical transport and rescue helicopter crew came to plaintiffs’ assistance, accompanied on this occasion by a video camera operator employed by a television producer. The cameraman filmed plaintiffs’ extrication from the car, the flight nurse and medic’s efforts to give them medical care during the extrication, and their transport to the hospital in the helicopter. The flight nurse wore a small microphone that picked up her conversations with other rescue workers and with one of the plaintiffs. This videotape and sound track were edited into a segment that was broadcast, months later, on a documentary television show, On Scene: Emergency Response. Plaintiffs, who consented neither to the filming and recording nor to the broadcast, allege the television producers thereby intruded into a realm of personal privacy and gave unwanted publicity to private events of their lives. The trial court granted summary judgment for the producers on the ground that the events depicted in the broadcast were newsworthy and the producers’ activities were therefore protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court of Appeal reversed, finding triable issues of fact exist as to one plaintiff’s claim for publication of private facts and legal error on the trial court’s part as to both plaintiffs’ intmsion claims. Agreeing with some, but not all, of the Court of Appeal’s analysis, we conclude summary judgment was proper as to plaintiffs’ cause of action for publication of private facts, but not as to their cause of action for intrusion. Facts and Procedural History On June 24, 1990, plaintiffs Ruth and Wayne Shulman, mother and son, were injured when the car in which they and two other family members were riding on interstate 10 in Riverside County flew off the highway and tumbled down an embankment into a drainage ditch on state-owned property, coming to rest upside down. Ruth, the most seriously injured of the two, was pinned under the car. Ruth and Wayne both had to be cut free from the vehicle by the device known as “the jaws of life.” A rescue helicopter operated by Mercy Air was dispatched to the scene. The flight nurse, who would perform the medical care at the scene and on the way to the hospital, was Laura Carnahan. Also on board were the pilot, a medic and Joel Cooke, a video camera operator employed by defendants Group W Productions, Inc., and 4MN Productions. Cooke was recording the rescue operation for later broadcast. Cooke roamed the accident scene, videotaping the rescue. Nurse Carnahan wore a wireless microphone that picked up her conversations with both Ruth and the other rescue personnel. Cooke’s tape was edited into a piece approximately nine minutes long, which, with the addition of narrative voice-over, was broadcast on September 29, 1990, as a segment of On Scene: Emergency Response. The segment begins with the Mercy Air helicopter shown on its way to the accident site. The narrator’s voice is heard in the background, setting the scene and describing in general terms what has happened. The pilot can be heard speaking with rescue workers on the ground in order to prepare for his landing. As the helicopter touches down, the narrator says: “[Fjour of the patients are leaving by ground ambulance. Two are still trapped inside.” (The first part of this statement was wrong, since only four persons were in the car to start.) After Carnahan steps from the helicopter, she can be seen and heard speaking about the situation with various rescue workers. A firefighter assures her they will hose down the area to prevent any fire from the wrecked car. The videotape shows only a glimpse of Wayne, and his voice is never heard. Ruth is shown several times, either by brief shots of a limb or her torso, or with her features blocked by others or obscured by an oxygen mask. She is also heard speaking several times. Carnahan calls her “Ruth,” and her last name is not mentioned on the broadcast. While Ruth is still trapped under the car, Carnahan asks Ruth’s age. Ruth responds, “I’m old.” On further questioning, Ruth reveals she is 47, and Carnahan observes that “it’s all relative. You’re not that old.” During her extrication from the car, Ruth asks at least twice if she is dreaming. At one point she asks Carnahan, who has told her she will be taken to the hospital in a helicopter: “Are you teasing?” At another point she says: “This is terrible. Am I dreaming?” She also asks what happened and where the rest of her family is, repeating the questions even after being told she was in an accident and the other family members are being cared for. While being loaded into the helicopter on a stretcher, Ruth says: “I just want to die.” Carnahan reassures her that she is “going to do real well,” but Ruth repeats: “I just want to die. I don’t want to go through this.” Ruth and Wayne are placed in the helicopter, and its door is closed. The narrator states: “Once airborne, Laura and [the flight medic] will update their patients’ vital signs and establish communications with the waiting trauma teams at Loma Linda.” Carnahan, speaking into what appears to be a radio microphone, transmits some of Ruth’s vital signs and states that Ruth cannot move her feet and has no sensation. The video footage during the helicopter ride includes a few seconds of Ruth’s face, covered by an oxygen mask. Wayne is neither shown nor heard. The helicopter lands on the hospital roof. With the door open, Ruth states while being taken out: “My upper back hurts.” Carnahan replies: “Your upper back hurts. That’s what you were saying up there.” Ruth states: “I don’t feel that great.” Carnahan responds: “You probably don’t.” Finally, Ruth is shown being moved from the helicopter into the hospital. The narrator concludes by stating: “Once inside both patients will be further evaluated and moved into emergency surgery if need be. Thanks to the efforts of the crew of Mercy Air, the firefighters, medics and police who responded, patients’ lives were saved.” As the segment ends, a brief, written epilogue appears on the screen, stating: “Laura’s patient spent months in the hospital. She suffered severe back injuries. The others were all released much sooner.” The accident left Ruth a paraplegic. When the segment was broadcast, Wayne phoned Ruth in her hospital room and told her to turn on the television because “Channel 4 is showing our accident now.” Shortly afterward, several hospital workers came into the room to mention that a videotaped segment of her accident was being shown. Ruth was “shocked, so to speak, that this would be run and I would be exploited, have my privacy invaded, which is what I felt had happened.” She did not know her rescue had been recorded in this manner and had never consented to the recording or broadcast. Ruth had the impression from the broadcast “that I was kind of talking nonstop, and I remember hearing some of the things I said, which were not very pleasant.” Asked at deposition what part of the broadcast material she considered private, Ruth explained: “I think the whole scene was pretty private. It was pretty gmesome, the parts that I saw, my knee sticking out of the car. I certainly did not look my best, and I don’t feel it’s for the public to see. I was not at my best in what I was thinking and what I was saying and what was being shown, and it’s not for the public to see this trauma that I was going through.” Ruth and Wayne sued the producers of On Scene: Emergency Response, as well as others. The first amended complaint included two causes of action for invasion of privacy, one based on defendants’ unlawful intrusion by videotaping the rescue in the first instance and the other based on the public disclosure of private facts, i.e., the broadcast. Defendants moved for summary judgment, contending primarily that their conduct was protected by the First Amendment because of the broadcast’s newsworthy content. In their response to the summary judgment motion, plaintiffs conceded, as undisputed facts, that an account of their accident and rescue appeared in a San Bernardino area newspaper shortly after the rescue and before the broadcast; that Mercy Air was dispatched to the scene by Riverside County officials and rendered service pursuant to Mercy Air’s license and agreement with the county; and that auto accidents on public highways and publicly provided emergency rescue and medical services were both matters of public interest that constituted public affairs. The trial court granted the media defendants’ summary judgment motion, basing its ruling on plaintiffs’ admissions that the accident and rescue were matters of public interest and public affairs. Those admissions, in the trial court’s view, showed as a matter of law that the broadcast material was newsworthy, thereby vesting the media defendants’ conduct with First Amendment protection. The court entered judgment for defendants on all causes of action. The Court of Appeal reversed and remanded for further proceedings, but on limited grounds arid as to some causes of action only. First, the Court of Appeal held plaintiffs had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the events at the accident scene itself. According to the lower court, “Appellants’ accident occurred on a heavily traveled public highway .... The videotape itself shows a crowd of onlookers peering down at the rescue scene below. Appellants could be seen and heard by anyone at the accident site itself and could not have had a reasonable expectation of privacy at the scene in regard to what they did or said. Their statements or exclamations could be freely heard by all who passed by and were thus public, not private.” Once inside the helicopter, however, the court next reasoned, plaintiffs did have a reasonable expectation of privacy; the helicopter was essentially an airborne ambulance, and an ambulance in emergency medical use is considered a private space, both by social tradition and by analogy to a hospital room, which was deemed private in Noble v. Sears, Roebuck & Co. (1973) 33 Cal.App.3d 654 [109 Cal.Rptr. 269, 73 A.L.R.3d 1164], As to Ruth’s cause of action for publication of private facts (limited to the broadcast of events recorded inside the helicopter), the Court of Appeal concluded triable issues of fact existed on the element of offensiveness and on a defense of newsworthiness. With regard to plaintiffs’ claims of intrusion, also as related to the recording of events in the helicopter, the Court of Appeal, citing Hill v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn. (1994) 7 Cal.4th 1 [26 Cal.Rptr.2d 834, 865 P.2d 633], held the trial court erred in applying a complete defense of newsworthiness; instead, the trial court should have conducted an analysis balancing plaintiffs’ privacy rights against defendants’ First Amendment interest in recording the rescue. The Court of Appeal therefore remanded for further proceedings as to both plaintiffs’ cause of action for intrusion and as to Ruth’s cause of action for publication of private facts. We conclude the Court of Appeal’s judgment should be affirmed except insofar as it remanded for further proceedings on Ruth’s private facts claim. With regard to that claim, we hold that the material broadcast was newsworthy as a matter of law and, therefore, cannot be the basis for tort liability under a private facts claim. Summary judgment thus was proper as to both plaintiffs on the private facts cause of action. As to intrusion, the Court of Appeal correctly found triable issues exist as to whether defendants invaded plaintiffs’ privacy by accompanying plaintiffs in the helicopter. Contrary to the holding below, we also hold triable issues exist as to whether defendants tortiously intruded by listening to Ruth’s confidential conversations with Nurse Carnahan at the rescue scene without Ruth’s consent. Moreover, we hold defendants had no constitutional privilege so to intrude on plaintiffs’ seclusion and private communications. Discussion Influenced by Dean Prosser’s analysis of the tort actions for invasion of privacy (Prosser, Privacy (1960) 48 Cal.L.Rev. 381) and the exposition of a similar analysis in the Restatement Second of Torts sections 652A-652E (further references to the Restatement are to the Restatement Second of Torts), California courts have recognized both of the privacy causes of action pleaded by plaintiffs here: (1) public disclosure of private facts, and (2) intrusion into private places, conversations or other matters. (See Forsher v. Bugliosi (1980) 26 Cal.3d 792, 808 [163 Cal.Rptr. 628, 608 P.2d 716]; Kapellas v. Kofman (1969) 1 Cal.3d 20, 35-36 [81 Cal.Rptr. 360, 459 P.2d 912]; Miller v. National Broadcasting Co. (1986) 187 Cal.App.3d 1463, 1482 [232 Cal.Rptr. 668, 69 A.L.R.4th 1027]; Diaz v. Oakland Tribune, Inc. (1983) 139 Cal.App.3d 118, 126 [188 Cal.Rptr. 762] {Diaz).) We shall review the elements of each privacy tort, as well as the common law and constitutional privilege of the press as to each, and shall apply in succession this law to the facts pertinent to each cause of action. I. Publication of Private Facts The claim that a publication has given unwanted publicity to allegedly private aspects of a person’s life is one of the more commonly litigated and well-defined areas of privacy law. In Diaz, supra, 139 Cal.App.3d at page 126, the appellate court accurately discerned the following elements of the public disclosure tort: “(1) public disclosure (2) of a private fact (3) which would be offensive and objectionable to the reasonable person and (4) which is not of legitimate public concern.” (See Forsher v. Bugliosi, supra, 26 Cal.3d at pp. 808-809; Gill v. Hearst Publishing Co. (1953) 40 Cal.2d 224, 228-231 [253 P.2d 441]; Carlisle v. Fawcett Publications, Inc. (1962) 201 Cal.App.2d 733, 744-748 [20 Cal.Rptr. 405].) That formulation does not differ significantly from the Restatement’s, which provides that “[o]ne who gives publicity to a matter concerning the private life of another is subject to liability to the other for invasion of his privacy, if the matter publicized is of a kind that ftO (a) would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and [^] (b) is not of legitimate concern to the public.” (Rest.2d Torts, § 652D.) The element critical to this case is the presence or absence of legitimate public interest, i.e., newsworthiness, in the facts disclosed. After reviewing the decisional law regarding newsworthiness, we conclude, inter alia, that lack of newsworthiness is an element of the “private facts” tort, making newsworthiness a complete bar to common law liability. We further conclude that the analysis of newsworthiness inevitably involves accommodating conflicting interests in personal privacy and in press freedom as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and that in the circumstances of this case—where the facts disclosed about a private person involuntarily caught up in events of public interest bear a logical relationship to the newsworthy subject of the broadcast and are not intrusive in great disproportion to their relevance—the broadcast was of legitimate public concern, barring liability under the private facts tort. The Diaz formulation, like the Restatement’s, includes as a tort element that the matter published is not of legitimate public concern. Diaz thus expressly makes the lack of newsworthiness part of the plaintiff’s case in a private facts action. (See also Diaz, supra, 139 Cal.App.3d at pp. 128-130 [plaintiff bears burden of proving published matter was not newsworthy].) Our own decisions are consistent, if less explicit, on this point. (See Forsher v. Bugliosi, supra, 26 Cal.3d at p. 809 [The defendant’s First Amendment right to disseminate information to the public must be considered “[i]n determining whether a cause of action [for publication of private facts] has been stated . . . .”]; Gill v. Curtis Publishing Co. (1953) 38 Cal.2d 273, 278 [239 P.2d 630] [Public interest in the dissemination of news and information must be balanced against the privacy right “in defining the boundaries of the right.”].) The Diaz approach is consistent with the tort’s historical development, in which defining an actionable invasion pf privacy has generally been understood to require balancing privacy interests against the press’s right to report, and the community’s interest in receiving, news and information. (See Brandeis, supra, 4 Harv. L.Rev. at p. 214; Melvin v. Reid, supra, 112 Cal.App. at p. 290; Sidis v. F-R Publishing Corporation (2d Cir. 1940) 113 F.2d 806, 809; Barbers/. Time, Inc. (1942) 348 Mo. 1199, 1206 [159 S.W.2d 291]; Carlisle v. Fawcett Publications, Inc., supra, 201 Cal.App.2d at p. 745; Gill v. Curtis Publishing Co., supra, 38 Cal.2d at p. 277; Briscoe v. Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., supra, 4 Cal.3d at p. 534.) We therefore agree with defendants that under California common law the dissemination of truthful, newsworthy material is not actionable as a publication of private facts. (Kapellas v. Kofrnan, supra, 1 Cal.3d at pp. 35-36; Diaz, supra, 139 Cal.App.3d at p. 126; Rest.2d Torts, § 652D.) If the contents of a broadcast or publication are of legitimate public concern, the plaintiff cannot establish a necessary element of the tort action, the lack of newsworthiness. To so state, however, is merely to begin the necessary legal inquiry, not to end it. It is in the determination of newsworthiness—in deciding whether published or broadcast material is of legitimate public concern—that courts must struggle most directly to accommodate the conflicting interests of individual privacy and press freedom. Although we speak of the lack of newsworthiness as an element of the private facts tort, newsworthiness is at the same time a constitutional defense to, or privilege against, liability for publication of truthful information. (Forsher v. Bugliosi, supra, 26 Cal.3d at p. 809; Gilbert v. Medical Economics Co. (10th Cir. 1981) 665 F.2d 305, 307-308; Vassiliades v. Garfinckel’s Brooks Bros. (D.C. 1985) 492 A.2d 580, 589.) Indeed, the danger of interference with constitutionally protected press freedom has been and remains an ever-present consideration for courts and commentators struggling to set the tort’s parameters, and the requirements of tort law and the Constitution have generally been assumed to be congruent. (See Rest.2d Torts, § 652D, com. d, p. 388 [newsworthiness standard developed in common law but now expresses constitutional limit as well]; Virgil v. Time, Inc. (9th Cir. 1975) 527 F.2d 1122, 1128-1130 [accepting Restatement test of newsworthiness as constitutional standard]; Ross v. Midwest Communications, Inc. (5th Cir. 1989) 870 F.2d 271, 273 [Stating of Texas law, which follows the Restatement, that “[i]n the ‘newsworthiness’ line of argument... the state law and constitutional tests are the same.”].) Little is to be gained, therefore, in attempting to keep rigorously separate the tort and constitutional issues as regards newsworthiness, and we have not attempted to do so here. Tort liability, obviously, can extend no further than the First Amendment allows; conversely, we see no reason or authority for fashioning the newsworthiness element of the private facts tort to preclude liability where the Constitution would allow it. Delineating the exact contours of the constitutional privilege of the press in publication of private facts is, however, particularly problematic, because this privilege has not received extensive attention from the United States Supreme Court. The high court has considered the issue in only one case involving the common law public disclosure tort, Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn (1975) 420 U.S. 469 [95 S.Ct. 1029, 43 L.Ed.2d 328] (Cox Broadcasting), and its holding in that case was deliberately and explicitly narrow. In Cox Broadcasting, a criminal court clerk, during a recess in court proceedings relating to a rape-murder case, allowed a television reporter to see the indictment, which contained the name of the victim. The television station broadcast an account of the court proceedings, using the victim’s name; the victim’s father alleged the broadcast to be a tortious publication of private facts. (Id. at pp. 471-474 [95 S.Ct. at pp. 1034-1035].) The Georgia Supreme Court, relying on a Georgia statute prohibiting publication or broadcast of a rape victim’s identity, held the broadcast of the victim’s name was not privileged as newsworthy; the court viewed the statute as showing that the victim’s identity was not a matter of legitimate public concern. The state court further held the statute did not itself infringe on the station’s First Amendment rights. (Id. at p. 475 [95 S.Ct. at p. 1035].) The federal high court reversed, but—recognizing the important interests on both sides of the newsworthiness question—proceeded cautiously and on limited grounds. “Rather than address the broader question of whether truthful publications may ever be subjected to civil or criminal liability consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, or to put it another way, whether the State may ever define and protect an area of privacy free from unwanted publicity in the press, it is appropriate to focus on the narrower interface between press and privacy that this case presents, namely, whether the State may impose sanctions on the accurate publication of the name of a rape victim obtained from public records—more specifically, from judicial records which are maintained in connection with a public prosecution and which themselves are open to public inspection. We are convinced that the State may not do so.” (Cox Broadcasting, supra, 420 U.S. at p. 491 [95 S.Ct. at p. 1044].) For this holding the court relied on the “responsibility of the press to report the operations of government” (id. at p. 492 [95 S.Ct. at p. 1045]), including judicial proceedings regarding crimes, and on the premise that “[b]y placing the information in the public domain on official court records, the State must be presumed to have concluded that the public interest was thereby being served” (id. at p. 495 [95 S.Ct. at p. 1046]). A more recent case cited by defendants, The Florida Star v. B. J. F. (1989) 491 U.S. 524 [109 S.Ct. 2603, 105 L.Ed.2d 443] (Florida Star), reached a. similar conclusion with regard to a Florida statute that, like the Georgia law in Cox Broadcasting, criminally punished the publication of a sexual assault victim’s name. In Florida Star, however, the plaintiff’s civil action was not pled as the common law tort for publication of private facts, but rather as a negligence action (with the criminal statute used as predicate for application of the negligence per se doctrine), a distinction the high court relied upon in holding liability to be constitutionally barred. (Id. at p. 539 [109 S.Ct. at p. 2612].) Here, again, the high court chose to move cautiously, “relying on limited principles that sweep no more broadly than the appropriate context of the instant case.” (Id. at p. 533 [109 S.Ct. at p. 2609].) The limited principle relied upon in Florida Star was that “ ‘[I]f a newspaper lawfully obtains truthful information about a matter of public significance then state officials may not constitutionally punish publication of the information, absent a need to further a state interest of the highest order.’ ” (Ibid.) Like Cox Broadcasting, the Florida Star decision provides little general guidance as to what is, and is not, “a matter of public significance”—what is newsworthy, in other words—or as to when, if ever, the protection of private facts against public disclosure should be considered a sufficiently important state interest to justify civil liability pursuant to the common law tort. As in Cox Broadcasting, moreover, the Florida Star new_spaper had obtained the victim’s name from a public records source, in this case a police report made available to the press. The high court’s holding that publication was constitutionally protected again rested in large part on the fact the government had, by making the information available to the press, impliedly determined its dissemination was in the public interest, and could not then punish a newspaper for “rely[ing] on the government’s implied representations of the lawfulness of dissemination.” (Florida Star, supra, 491 U.S. at p. 536 [109 S.Ct. at p. 2610].) One federal court has observed that, despite the limited scope of their holdings, “the implications of [Cox Broadcasting and Florida Star] for the branch of the right of privacy that limits the publication of private facts are profound .... The Court must believe that the First Amendment greatly circumscribes the right even of a private figure to obtain damages for the publication of newsworthy facts about him, even when they are facts of a kind that people want very much to conceal.” (Haynes v. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (7th Cir. 1993) 8 F.3d 1222, 1232.) We agree the high court’s decisions are instructive on the strength of First Amendment protection for truthful publication of private facts. More particularly, they establish that truthful reporting on current judicial proceedings, using material drawn from public records, is generally within the scope of constitutional protection. The decisions do not, however, enunciate a general test of newsworthiness applicable to other factual circumstances or provide a broad theoretical basis for discovery of such a general constitutional standard. (See Woito & McNulty, The Privacy Disclosure Tort and the First Amendment: Should the Community Decide Newsworthiness? (1978) 64 Iowa L.Rev. 185, 199-202.) Newsworthiness—constitutional or common law—is also difficult to define because it may be used as either a descriptive or a normative term. “Is the term ‘newsworthy’ a descriptive predicate, intended to refer to the fact there is widespread public interest? Or is it a value predicate, intended to indicate that the publication is a meritorious contribution and that the public’s interest is praiseworthy?” (Comment, The Right of Privacy: Normative-Descriptive Confusion in the Defense of Newsworthiness (1963) 30 U. Chi. L.Rev. 722, 725.) A position at either extreme has unpalatable consequences. If “newsworthiness” is completely descriptive—if all coverage that sells papers or boosts ratings is deemed newsworthy—it would seem to swallow the publication of private facts tort, for “it would be difficult to suppose that publishers were in the habit of reporting occurrences of little interest.” (Id. at p. 734.) At the other extreme, if newsworthiness is viewed as a purely normative concept, the courts could become to an unacceptable degree editors of the news and self-appointed guardians of public taste. The difficulty of finding a workable standard in the middle ground between the extremes of normative and descriptive analysis, and the variety of factual circumstances in which the issue has been presented, have led to considerable variation in judicial descriptions of the newsworthiness concept. As one commentator has noted, the newsworthiness test “bears an enormous social pressure, and it is not surprising to find that the common law is deeply confused and ambivalent about its application.” (Post, The Social Foundations of Privacy: Community and Self in the Common Law Tort (1989) 77 Cal.L.Rev. 957, 1007.) Without attempting an exhaustive survey, and with particular focus on California decisions, we review some of these attempts below. In the first California privacy case, Melvin v. Reid, supra, 112 Cal.App. 285, the defendants, using the plaintiff’s true maiden name, had produced and exhibited a motion picture based on events of the plaintiff’s life, including her having been a prostitute many years earlier. (Id. at pp. 286-287.) The appellate court held the use of the plaintiff’s true name “was unnecessary and indelicate, and a willful and wanton disregard of that charity which should actuate us in our social intercourse.” (Id. at p. 291.) In short, such use was “not justified by any standard of morals or ethics known to us.” (Id. at p. 292.) This court took a similar, albeit less overtly moralistic, approach in Gill v. Curtis Publishing Co., supra, 38 Cal.2d 273 (Gill v. Curtis), involving a Ladies Home Journal article entitled Love that used a photograph of the plaintiffs embracing to illustrate the “wrong” kind of love, “founded upon 100 per cent sex attraction.” (Id. at p. 275.) As the Court of Appeal had done in Melvin v. Reid, supra, 112 Cal.App. 285, we attempted to distinguish a disclosure of private facts that was closely connected to the newsworthiness of the publication from one that superfluously exposed the subject’s private life to public view. Assuming the article’s contents “to be within the range of public interest in dissemination of news, information or education,” still “the public interest did not require the use of any particular person’s likeness nor that of plaintiffs without their consent.” (Gill v. Curtis, supra, at p. 279.) Although we therefore did not need to decide on a general standard of newsworthiness, we noted that “[fjactors deserving consideration may include the medium of publication, the extent of the use, the public interest served by the publication, and the seriousness of the interference with the person’s privacy.” (Id. at pp. 278-279.) A year later, without explicitly overruling Gill v. Curtis, we reached a seemingly inconsistent conclusion in another case involving the same publication. (Gill v. Hearst Publishing Co., supra, 40 Cal.2d 224 (Gill v. Hearst).) We held no action for invasion of privacy would lie solely for publication of the photograph of the plaintiffs embracing. The photograph itself, we reasoned, enjoyed some measure of constitutional protection despite its slight or nonexistent informational value. “Apparently the picture has no particular news value but is designed to serve the function of entertainment as a matter of legitimate public interest. [Citation.] However, the constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression apply with equal force to the publication whether it be a news report or an entertainment feature . . . .” (Id. at p. 229.) The author of Gill v. Curtis dissented from this portion of Gill v. Hearst, arguing, “it should be quite obvious that there is no news or educational value whatsoever in the photograph alone. It depicts two persons (plaintiffs) in an amorous pose. . . . While some remote news significance might be attached to persons in such a pose on the theory that the public likes and is entitled to see persons in such a pose, there is no reason why the publisher need invade the privacy of John and Jane Doe for his purpose. He can employ models for that purpose and the portion of the public interested will never know the difference but its maudlin curiosity will be appeased.” (Gill v. Hearst, supra, 40 Cal.2d at p. 232 (cone. & dis. opn. of Carter, J.).) This court next addressed the question in Kapellas v. Koftnan, supra, 1 Cal.3d 20 (Kapellas), involving a newspaper editorial that allegedly violated the privacy rights of the children of a woman running for public office by revealing certain juvenile offenses and peccadilloes for which the children had been arrested or detained. Drawing from academic comment and the two Gill decisions, we attempted a general analysis involving the balancing of three factors: “In determining whether a particular incident is ‘newsworthy’ and thus whether the privilege shields its truthful publication from liability, the courts consider a variety of factors, including the social value of the facts published, the depth of the article’s intrusion into ostensibly private affairs, and the extent to which the party voluntarily acceded to a position of public notoriety.” (Kapellas, supra, at p. 36.) Applying these factors, we articulated a general rule favoring dissemination of relevant information regarding candidates for public office, including at least some information about their families: “Generally, courts will be most reluctant to impede the free flow of any truthful information that may be relevant to a candidate’s qualifications for office. Although the conduct of a candidate’s children in many cases may not appear particularly relevant to his qualifications for office, normally the public should be permitted to determine the importance or relevance of the reported facts for itself. If the publication does not proceed widely beyond the bounds of propriety and reason in disclosing facts about those closely related to an aspirant for public office, the compelling public interest in the unfettered dissemination of information will outweigh society’s interest in preserving such individuals’ rights to privacy.” (Id. at pp. 37-38, fn. omitted.) Following the articulated principle, we held the information disclosed, if true, was absolutely privileged. (Id. at p. 39.) We employed the Kapellas factors in Briscoe v. Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., supra, 4 Cal.3d 529 (Briscoe). A magazine article on truck hijacking included a description of such a crime the plaintiff had committed 11 years earlier, using the plaintiff’s true name. Conceding that “reports of the facts of past crimes are newsworthy” (id. at p. 537), we nonetheless concluded a jury could reasonably find the plaintiff’s identity as a former hijacker to be nonnews worthy. The identification of a rehabilitated person as a former criminal was, under the circumstances, of “minimal social value” (id. at p. 541), would tend to interfere with the state’s interest in rehabilitating criminals and returning them to society, and could be regarded as a serious intrusion on private matters (id. at p. 542). In Briscoe, while employing Kapellas’s analysis of competing interests, we also recognized the strong constitutional policy against fact-dependent balancing of First Amendment rights against other interests. “Because the categories with which we deal—private and public, newsworthy and non-newsworthy—have no clear profile, there is a temptation to balance interests in ad hoc fashion in each case. Yet history teaches us that such a process leads too often to discounting society’s stake in First Amendment rights. [Citation.] We therefore strive for as much predictability as possible within our system of case-by-case adjudication, lest we unwittingly chill First Amendment freedoms.” (Briscoe, supra, 4 Cal.3d at pp. 542-543, fn. 18.) We believed, however, the danger of chilling future expression by our holding in Briscoe was slight because the facts of the case clearly negated protection. (Ibid.) Our holding of possible liability in that case, moreover, was expressly limited to narrow circumstances to be established at trial: that the plaintiff, having been punished for his past crime, was now “a rehabilitated member of society”; that identification of him as a former criminal was not only highly offensive but “injurious” to his efforts at leading an ordinary law-abiding life; that the publication was made with reckless disregard for its offensiveness; and that the defendant had no “independent justification” for printing plaintiff’s identity. (Id. at p. 543.) In the most recent of this court’s decisions on publication of private facts, we applied the same general analysis of newsworthiness as in Briscoe but distinguished that case on its facts. (Forsher v. Bugliosi, supra, 26 Cal.3d at pp. 809-813 (Forsher).) We held the defendant’s book, Helter-Skelter, did not invade the plaintiff’s privacy by mentioning his name in connection with the disappearance of an attorney who had represented a defendant in the highly publicized Tate-LaBianca killings. Briscoe, we observed, was “an exception to the more general .rule that ‘once a man has become a public figure, or news, he remains a matter of legitimate recall to the public mind to the end of his days.’ ” (Forsher, supra, at p. 811.) As the exceptional reasons for protecting Briscoe’s identity did not apply to Forsher, we concluded the identification of Forsher in connection with the death of an attorney formerly involved in the case was of continuing public concern at the time of publication. (Id. at p. 813.) Our prior decisions have not explicitly addressed the type of privacy invasion alleged in this case: the broadcast of embarrassing pictures and speech of a person who, while generally not a public figure, has become involuntarily involved in an event or activity of legitimate public concern. We nonetheless draw guidance from those decisions, in that they articulate the competing interests to be balanced. First, the analysis of newsworthiness does involve courts to some degree in a normative assessment of the “social value” of a publication. (Kapellas, supra, 1 Cal.3d at p. 36.) All material that might attract readers or viewers is not, simply by virtue of its attractiveness, of legitimate public interest. Second, the evaluation of newsworthiness depends on the degree of intrusion and the extent to which the plaintiff played an important role in public events (ibid.), and thus on a comparison between the information revealed and the nature of the activity or event that brought the plaintiff to public attention. “Some reasonable proportion is . . . to be maintained between the events or activity that makes the individual a public figure and the private facts to which publicity is given. Revelations that may properly be made concerning a murderer or the President of the United States would not be privileged if they were to be made concerning one who is merely injured in an automobile accident.” (Rest.2d Torts, § 652D, com. h, p. 391.) Courts balancing these interests in cases similar to this have recognized that, when a person is involuntarily involved in a newsworthy incident, not all aspects of the person’s life, and not everything the person says or does, is thereby rendered newsworthy. “Most persons are connected with some activity, vocational or avocational, as to which the public can be said as a matter of law to have a legitimate interest or curiosity. To hold as a matter of law that private facts as to such persons are also within the area of legitimate public interest could indirectly expose everyone’s private life to public view.” {Virgil v. Time, Inc., supra, 527 F.2d at p. 1131; accord, Gilbert v. Medical Economics Co., supra, 665 F.2d at p. 308 {Gilbert).) This principle is illustrated in the decisions holding that, while a particular event was newsworthy, identification of the plaintiff as the person involved, or use of the plaintiff’s identifiable image, added nothing of significance to the story and was therefore an unnecessary invasion of privacy. (See Briscoe, supra, 4 Cal.3d at p. 541 [identification of plaintiff as former criminal]; Gill v. Curtis, supra, 38 Cal.2d at p. 279 [use of plaintiffs’ photograph to illustrate article on love]; Melvin v. Reid, supra, 112 Cal.App. at pp. 291-292 [identification of plaintiff as former prostitute]; Barber v. Time, Inc., supra, 348 Mo. at pp. 1207-1208 [159 S.W.2d at pp. 295-296] [use of plaintiff’s name and photograph in article about her unusual medical condition]; Vassiliades v. Garftnckel’s Brooks Bros., supra, 492 A.2d at pp. 589-590 [use of plaintiff’s photograph to illustrate presentations on cosmetic surgery].) For the same reason, a college student’s candidacy for president of the student body did not render newsworthy a newspaper’s revelation that the student was a transsexual, where the court could find “little if any connection between the information disclosed and [the student’s] fitness for office.” {Diaz, supra, 139 Cal.App.3d at p. 134.) Similarly, a mother’s private words over the body of her slain son as it lay in a hospital room were held nonriewsworthy despite undisputed legitimate public interest in the subjects of gang violence and murder. {Green v. Chicago Tribune Co. (1996) 286 Ill.App.3d 1 [221 Ill.Dec. 342, 675 N.E.2d 249, 255-256].) Consistent with the above, courts have generally protected the privacy of otherwise private individuals involved in events of public interest “by requiring that a logical nexus exist between the complaining individual and the matter of legitimate public interest.” (Campbell v. Seabury Press (5th Cir. 1980) 614 F.2d 395, 397.) The contents of the publication or broadcast are protected only if they have “some substantial relevance to a matter of legitimate public interest.” (Gilbert, supra, 665 F.2d at p. 308.) Thus, recent decisions have generally tested newsworthiness with regard to such individuals by assessing the logical relationship or nexus, or the lack thereof, between the events or activities that brought the person into the public eye and the particular facts disclosed. These decisions have used a number of similar or equivalent phrases to describe the necessary relationship. (See Cinel v. Connick (5th Cir. 1994) 15 F.3d 1338, 1346 [“substantially related”]; Ross v. Midwest Communications, Inc., supra, 870 F.2d at p. 274 [5th Cir.: “logical nexus”]; Campbell v. Seabury Press, supra, 614 F.2d at p. 397 [5th Cir.: “logical nexus”]; Gilbert, supra, 665 F.2d at p. 308 [10th Cir.: “substantial relevance”]; Lee v. Calhoun (10th Cir. 1991) 948 F.2d 1162, 1165-1166 [following Gilbert]’, Haynes v. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., supra, 8 F.3d at p. 1233 [facts “germane” to story]; Vassiliades v. GarfinckeVs Brooks Bros., supra, 492 A.2d at p. 590 [“logical nexus”].) This approach accords with our own prior decisions, in that it balances the public’s right to know against the plaintiff’s privacy interest by drawing a protective line at the point the material revealed ceases to have any substantial connection to the subject matter of the newsworthy report. (Cf. Kapellas, supra, 1 Cal.3d at p. 37 [in context of political candidacy, truthful information is generally protected if it “may be relevant” to qualifications for office].) This approach also echoes the Restatement commentators’ widely quoted and cited view that legitimate public interest does not include “a morbid and sensational prying into private lives for its own sake . . . .” (Rest.2d Torts, § 652D, com. h, p. 391, italics added; see, e.g., Sipple v. Chronicle Publishing Co. (1984) 154 Cal.App.3d 1040, 1048-1049 [201 Cal.Rptr. 665]; Virgil v. Time, Inc., supra, 527 F.2d at p. 1129; Gilbert, supra, 665 F.2d at pp. 307-308; see also Haynes v. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., supra, 8 F.3d at p. 1232 [private facts not newsworthy “when the community has no interest in them beyond the voyeuristic thrill of penetrating the wall of privacy that surrounds a stranger”].) An analysis measuring newsworthiness of facts about an otherwise private person involuntarily involved in an event of public interest by their relevance to a newsworthy subject matter incorporates considerable deference to reporters and editors, avoiding the likelihood of unconstitutional interference with the freedom of the press to report truthfully on matters of legitimate public interest. In general, it is not for a court or jury to say how a particular story is best covered. The constitutional privilege to publish truthful material “ceases to operate only when an editor abuses his broad discretion to publish matters that are of legitimate public interest.” (Gilbert, supra, 665 F.2d at p. 308.) .By confining our interference to extreme cases, the courts “avoidQ unduly limiting ... the exercise of effective editorial judgment.” ('Virgil v. Time, Inc., supra, 527 F.2d at p. 1129.) Nor is newsworthiness governed by the tastes or limited interests of an individual judge or juror; a publication is newsworthy if some reasonable members of the community could entertain a legitimate interest in it. Our analysis thus does not purport to distinguish among the various legitimate purposes that may be served by truthful publications and broadcasts. As we said in Gill v. Hearst, supra, 40 Cal.2d at page 229, “the constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression apply with equal force to the publication whether it be a news report or an entertainment feature . . . .” Thus, newsworthiness is not limited to “news” in the narrow sense of reports of current events. “It extends also to the use of names, likenesses or facts in giving information to the public for purposes of education, amusement or enlightenment, when the public may reasonably be expected to have a legitimate interest in what is published.” (Rest.2d Torts, § 652D, com. j, p. 393; accord, Gilbert, supra, 665 F.2d at p. 308; Virgil v. Time, Inc., supra, 527 F.2d at p. 1129; see also Carlisle v. Fawcett Publications, Inc., supra, 201 Cal.App.2d at p. 746 [matters of legitimate public interest include, for example, “the reproduction of past events, travelogues and biographies”]; Vassiliades v. Garfinckel’s Brooks Bros., supra, 492 A.2d at p. 589 [includes “ ‘information concerning interesting phases of human activity’ ”].) Finally, an analysis focusing on relevance allows courts and juries to decide most cases involving persons involuntarily involved in events of public interest without “balancing] interests in ad hoc fashion in each case” (Briscoe, supra, 4 Cal.3d at p. 542, fn. 18). The articulation of standards that do not require “ad hoc resolution of the competing interest in each . . . case” (Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974) 418 U.S. 323, 343 [94 S.Ct. 2997, 3009, 41 L.Ed.2d 789]) is favored in areas affecting First Amendment rights, because the relative predictability of results reached under such standards minimizes the inadvertent chilling of protected speech, and because standards that can be applied objectively provide a stronger shield against the unconstitutional punishment of unpopular speech. (Ibid.; Nimmer, The Right to Speak from Times to Time: First Amendment Theory Applied to Libel and Misapplied to Privacy (1968) 56 Cal.L.Rev. 935, 938-945 (hereafter Nimmer); see also Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (1997) 521 U.S. 844 [117 S.Ct. 2329, 2341, 2344-2345, 138 L.Ed.2d 874] [Internet speech prohibitions employing undefined term “indecent” and appealing to “community standards” of what is “patently offensive” are, absent further narrowing of prohibitions, unconstitutionally vague and uncertain.].) On the other hand, no mode of analyzing newsworthiness can be applied mechanically or without consideration of its proper boundaries. To observe that the newsworthiness of private facts about a person involuntarily thrust into the public eye depends, in the ordinary case, on the existence of a logical nexus between the newsworthy event or activity and the facts revealed is not to deny that the balance of free press and privacy interests may require a different conclusion when the intrusiveness of the revelation is greatly disproportionate to its relevance. Intensely personal or intimate revelations might not, in a given case, be considered newsworthy, especially where they bear only slight relevance to a topic of legitimate public concern. (See Kapellas, supra, 1 Cal.3d at pp. 37-38 [public interest in free flow of information will outweigh interest in individual privacy “[i]f the publication does not proceed widely beyond the bounds of propriety and reason in disclosing facts about those closely related to an aspirant for public office . . .”]; Haynes v. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., supra, 8 F.3d at pp. 1234-1235 [although personal facts revealed in book at issue were newsworthy because germane to the book’s subject matter, that protection may not extend to publication of “intimate physical details the publicizing of which would be not merely embarrassing and painful but deeply shocking to the average person”].) A few words are in order at this point regarding the right of privacy secured by article I, section 1 of the California Constitution. The Court of Appeal, citing Hill v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn., supra, 7 Cal.4th at pages 37-38 (Hill), equated the judicial balancing undertaken in delineation of the common law right of privacy to the balancing of interests this court has prescribed for evaluating claims raised under our state’s constitutional right of privacy. Defendants attack the Court of Appeal’s adoption of Hill’s balancing test in the common law tort context, arguing that under the federal Constitution newsworthiness is a complete bar to liability, rather than merely an interest to be balanced against private or state-protected interests. We agree with defendants that the publication of truthful, lawfully obtained material of legitimate public concern is constitutionally privileged and does not create liability under the private facts tort. As discussed above, however, a certain amount of interest-balancing does occur in deciding whether material is of legitimate public concern, or in formulating rules for that decision. To that extent, the Court of Appeal’s analogy to Hill was not in error. In Hill, we held, inter alia, that article I, section 1 of the California Constitution protects Californians against invasions of privacy by nongovernmental as well as governmental parties. (Hill, supra, 7 Cal.4th at pp. 15-20.) Decisions concerning the tort actions for invasion of privacy have, in addition, sometimes linked the plaintiffs’ protected interest to that constitutional provision. (See, e.g., Miller v. National Broadcasting Co., supra, 187 Cal.App.3d at pp. 1490-1491 [intrusion plaintiff’s interest protected by constitutional privacy provision]; Melvin v. Reid, supra, 112 Cal.App. at p. 291 [in private facts case predating addition of “privacy” to article I, section 1, plaintiff deemed protected by that section’s guarantee of right to pursue and obtain happiness].) The Hill court itself sought to “draw upon the one hundred years of legal experience surrounding the term ‘privacy’ ” in formulating the correct analysis of claims brought under the state Constitution. (Hill, supra, 7 Cal.4th at p. 27.) Thus, these two sources of protection for privacy—the common law and the state Constitution—are not unrelated. Nothing in Hill or our more recent constitutional privacy cases (American Academy of Pediatrics v. Lungren (1997) 16 Cal.4th 307 [66 Cal.Rptr.2d 210, 940 P.2d 797]; Loder v. City of Glendale (1997) 14 Cal.4th 846 [59 Cal.Rptr.2d 696, 927 P.2d 1200]), however, suggests that the conceptual framework developed for resolving privacy claims under the California Constitution was intended to supplant the common law tort analysis or preclude its independent development. Nor did we have occasion in those cases to address the analytical means by which a state-created privacy right, whether of constitutional or common law origin, may be accommodated to conflicting and superior demands of federal constitutional interests, as for example those protected by the First Amendment. Turning now to the case at bar, we consider whether the possibly private facts complained of here—broadly speaking, Ruth’s appearance and words during the rescue and evacuation—were of legitimate public interest. If so, summary judgment was properly entered. “[Bjecause unnecessarily protracted litigation would have a chilling effect upon the exercise of First Amendment rights, speedy resolution of cases involving free speech is desirable. [Citation.] Therefore, summary judgment is a favored remedy [in such cases] . . . .” (Good Government Group of Seal Beach, Inc. v. Superior Court (1978) 22 Cal.3d 672, 685 [150 Cal.Rptr. 258, 586 P.2d 572]; see also Haynes v. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., supra, 8 F.3d at p. 1234 [Affirming summary judgment for defendants in private facts case: “To any suggestion that the outer bounds of liability should be left to a jury to decide we reply that in cases involving the rights protected by the speech and press clauses of the First Amendment the courts insist on judicial control of the jury.”].) Nonetheless, the basic question raised on a defense motion for summary judgment, and on review of such judgment, is the same in a privacy action against media defendants as in other cases: Does the motion record demonstrate the existence of triable issues of fact, or was the defense entitled to judgment as a matter of law? (Code Civ. Proc., § 437c, subd. (c); Sipple v. Chronicle Publishing Co., supra, 54 Cal.App.3d at p. 1046.) We agree at the outset with defendants that the subject matter of the broadcast as a whole was of legitimate public concern. Automobile accidents are by their nature of interest to that great portion of the public that travels frequently by automobile. The rescue and medical treatment of accident victims is also of legitimate concern to much of the public, involving as it does a critical service that any member of the public may someday need. The story of Ruth’s difficult extrication from the crushed car, the medical attention given her at the scene, and her evacuation by helicopter was of particular interest because it highlighted some of the challenges facing emergency workers dealing with serious accidents. The more difficult question is whether Ruth’s appearance and words as she was extricated from the overturned car, placed in the helicopter and transported to the hospital were of legitimate public concern. Pursuant to the analysis outlined earlier, we conclude the disputed material was newsworthy as a matter of law. One of the dramatic and interesting aspects of the story as a whole is its focus on flight nurse Carnahan, who appears to be in charge of communications with other emergency workers, the hospital base and Ruth, and who leads the medical assistance to Ruth at the scene. Her work is portrayed as demanding and important and as involving a measure of personal risk (e.g., in crawling under the car to aid Ruth despite warnings that gasoline may be dripping from the car). The broadcast segment makes apparent that this type of emergency care requires not only medical knowledge, concentration and courage, but an ability to talk and listen to severely traumatized patients. One of the challenges Carnahan faces in assisting Ruth is the confusion, pain and fear that Ruth understandably feels in the aftermath of the accident. For that r