Jones v. U.S. Child Support Recovery

Kathleen Francis Jones (plaintiff) and Clyde David Fritch were married and had a son. In 1993 Jones and Fritch divorced. Jones was ordered to pay Fritch $468 per month in child support. After Jones missed three months of payment, Fritch hired Zandra L. Perkins and United States Child Support Recovery (collectively, the child-support collectors) (defendants) to collect the unpaid child support. The child-support collectors left harassing telephone messages for Jones, attacking her parenting and calling her a bad mother. Jones did not pay her child-support debt, and the child-support collectors sent posters to her family and employer claiming that Jones did not care about her son. Jones filed a lawsuit against the child-support collectors in federal district court, alleging that the child-support collectors invaded her privacy through the tort of publicity given to private life and the tort of intrusion on seclusion. The child-support collectors moved to dismiss Jones’s claims. With regard to the tort of publicity given to private life, the child-support collectors argued that the posters they sent to Jones’s family and employer did not rise to the level of publicity required by law. With regard to the tort of intrusion on seclusion, the child-support collectors argued that Jones failed to allege monetary damage caused by their actions.