A 19-year-old student who sued Falcon Holidays for including a photograph of her as a nine-year-old in a holiday brochure has lost her €38,000 damages claim for breach of privacy yesterday.
Siobhain Murray, of Abbey Park, Baldoyle, Co Dublin, was pictured lying on an air-bed splashing about in a swimming pool in Greece in June 1995.
She broke down in tears in the Circuit Civil Court as she recalled "the pain" of having been mocked at school by pupils, who taunted her about "topless modelling".
Ms Murray told the court she had seen a man photograph her and other children in the hotel swimming pool in Kos, off the Greek mainland.
He had asked them to smile and to wave at the camera.
She had thought nothing more of it until one day in school in 2000 some girls in her class told her they had seen her in a holiday brochure, and jeered her for thinking she was a model.
Judge Jacqueline Linnane, in a reserved judgment, yesterday told Ronan Dolan, counsel for Falcon Holidays, that the photograph was a happy holiday picture of Ms Murray, and she was dismissing her claim.
She said there was a recognised right to privacy under Article 40 of the Constitution but, taking into consideration the facts and existing law, Ms Murray could not succeed either under the law of tort, or breach of confidence, constitutional rights or breach of contract.
Margaret Quinn, counsel for Ms Murray, cited the successful case of film stars Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones against Hello magazine.
Their wedding had been photographed surreptitiously, and the photographs subsequently published in Hello.
Judge Linnane said in her judgment the Douglas-Zeta-Jones case had been in the nature of a breach of a trade secret.
She made no order as to costs.