A lady never reveals her age... and when IMDb does, she sues them.

An actress's suit against IMDb for listing her age without her permission has survived summary judgment and will proceed to trial. 

U.S. District Judge Marsha Percham denied IMDb's motion for summary judgment on a breach of contract claim.  The suit, originally filed in October 2011, will now proceed to trial and is scheduled to begin on April 8.

Here's a quick refresher to catch you up on how we got here:

According to Hoang, she contacted IMDb to remove an erroneous date of birth from her public IMDb page.  IMDb refused to remove the date of birth unless Hoang could provide evidence that the date was erroneous.  Here's where the story gets interesting... according to Hoang, IMDb accessed the credit card information associated with her account and used it to conduct a search on PrivateEye.com and determine her actual birthday.  With the true date of birth in hand, IMDb then published Hoang's date of birth on her public page.  At no point did the site inform her they had accessed her payment information or conducted a search for her on PrivateEye.com.

Hoang claims that IMDb's publication of her birthday has led to age discrimination by Hollywood casting directors and directly led to her removal from one film project.  Hoang also claimed IMDb was liable for emotional distress, but the ruling by Judge Percham denied Hoang's emotional damages claim.

Judge Percham also denied Hoang's claims under the Consumer Protection Act, finding that Hoang "cannot show that the public interest is impacted by IMDb's actions." 

By alleging a breach of contract, Hoang faces an easier road than if she had alleged  the tort of public disclosure.  The tort requires that the information disclosed be highly offensive to a reasonable person.  I don't think that anyone, outside of Hollywood at least, would find the publication of a woman's age to be particularly scandalous or offensive.  Under the breach of contract claim, she merely needs to demonstrate that IMDb violated its Terms of Service and Privacy Policies by accessing her consumer information without her permission.

From the looks of it, the trial will likely hinge upon whether or not IMDb's actions constituted a response to Hoang's request to remove her incorrect date of birth or, alternatively, an effort by IMDb to improve the services offered by their website.  IMDb's privacy policy explicitly states that it uses personal information to, among other things, respond to user requests and improve the website.


Hoang did request that IMDb remove a false birthday on her page.  IMDb claims that, when asked for evidence that the listed date was erroneous, Hoang provided falsified information to the website.  If I'm IMDb's lawyer, I'm telling the jury that the search was merely a step taken to satisfy Hoang's request to verify her date of birth and the "rare" steps taken in this instance were necessitated by her decision to provide the site with false information in order to appear younger, a violation of the site's Terms of Service.

Alternatively, it could be argued that IMDb's actions were part of maintaining and improving the services of the website.  By providing accurate information about actors, actresses, directors, etc., IMDb is able to fulfill it's role as a resource for casting directors, executives, and other members of the entertainment industry.  The age discrimination in casting is the fault of casting directors, not IMDb.

In opposition, Hoang could (and, dare I say, should) contend that IMDb's actions went well beyond the simple servicing of an administrative request and plenty of alternative (and much less intrusive) forms of action existed, including just leaving the incorrect birthday on the website.  In addition, IMDb's site maintenance and improvements shouldn't come on the backs of intrusions into subscriber's credit card and other personal data.

In my not yet professional opinion, this could shape up to be a really important case in determining just what websites can do with our information and just how broad the terms of rarely read Privacy Policies and Terms of Service are.