NFL Player Sues ESPN For Tweeting Medical Chart

Jason Pierre-Paul

New York Giants defense end Jason Pierre-Paul is suing ESPN and its reporter Adam Schefter over Schefter tweeting out an image of the NFL player's medical chart last year that showed his amputated right finger as a result of a Fourth of July accident.

Pierre-Paul is charging that his privacy was invaded and Florida's medical privacy statute was violated, while ESPN says the report was a matter of public concern and was protected by the First Amendment.

Schefter explained last year: "This was a public figure and franchise player involved in a widely speculated accident with potential criminal behavior in which there was a cone of secrecy that surrounded him for five days that not even his own team could crack. This wasn't as if some player were admitted to the hospital with a secret illness or disease. . . "

But attorneys for Pierre-Paul argue: "If the hospitalization of a public figure constituted authorization for the publication of that person's medical records, then the right to privacy would be non-existent. Indeed, public figures would hesitate to seek medical treatment, or be less likely to share certain information with health care professionals, out of fear that hospital personnel would sell their medical records to those who want to profit from [their] publication . . . (as ESPN did here), thereby negatively impacting their health. That is not the purpose of the First Amendment."