In a long-running suit involving a Lifetime docudrama and the ax murderer depicted in it, a state appeals court has thrown out the convicted murderer's privacy-right misappropriation case, rejecting his argument that the docudrama was a "substantially fictitious biography" that had wrongly "presented itself as a completely accurate depiction."

The detailed decision from the Appellate Division, Third Department court in Albany appears to help clarify, in the context of a commercial misappropriation claim involving a docudrama, the scope of certain limited privacy rights carved out for state residents decades ago via the state's Civil Rights Law §§ 50 and 51.