Gov. OKs Bills Protecting Stars, Consumers

Showing solidarity with his fellow movie stars and drawing from his own unpleasant experiences, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger approved legislation Friday that makes it easier for celebrities to collect substantial damages from overly aggressive paparazzi.

Schwarzenegger also signed consumer protection measures offered by Democrats designed to protect the owners of homes destroyed by fires; help poor people obtain less expensive auto insurance; and punish Internet crooks who try to con people into revealing personal financial information.

The paparazzi bill was inspired by recent incidents involving two actresses in Los Angeles.

In May, a photographer was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon after Lindsay Lohan, a tabloid favorite who starred in “Mean Girls,” complained that he rammed her car with his minivan.

The previous month, Reese Witherspoon, who starred in “Election” and “Vanity Fair,” told police that photographers blocked her car outside a gated community off Sunset Boulevard; no charges were filed.

Schwarzenegger has been stalked by paparazzi, two of whom were convicted of false imprisonment charges in 1998 after they boxed in the future governor and his wife, Maria Shriver, outside their son’s Westside preschool.

Under the bill he signed Friday, AB 381, anyone who commits an assault to photograph or record a person can be sued and forced to forfeit all profit made from the incident. The law takes effect in January.

“Money is their base of motivation,” said Assemblywoman Cindy Montanez (D-San Fernando), the measure’s author. “This takes away their profit motive.”

Alan Rosenberg, the new president of the Screen Actors Guild, said in a statement: “This is a victory for guild members who have been terrorized by unprofessional paparazzi.”

Though backed by the Los Angeles district attorney, the measure was opposed by the state’s newspaper association, which said that California’s existing anti-paparazzi law had already led to “silly lawsuits” and “bizarre notions of personal privacy.”

Frank Griffin, co-founder of the paparazzi firm Bauer-Griffin, said the new law is ambiguous and unlikely to change photographers’ behavior.

It could be misused by celebrities, he said, or public officials who are unhappy with press coverage.

“What it’ll lead to is a lot of frivolous actions by those celebrities who feel slighted,” Griffin said.

He questioned the need for the law, saying that photographs of angry celebrities don’t sell. “I just don’t see photographers, even the renegades, the idiots, go around and smack somebody,” Griffin said.

Tom Newton, an attorney for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., called the new law possibly unconstitutional and “a joke of a bill.”

“It subjects people engaged in 1st Amendment activity to punishment to which the rest of the public is not subjected,” Newton said. “If any celebrity attempts to use it against any of our members, I suspect that that defendant will raise constitutional issues.”

The governor disagreed about the need for the law, though just the day before he cited the dangers of frivolous lawsuits when he vetoed legislation that would have made it easier for class-action lawsuits to be filed against employers who fail to pay the minimum wage or obey overtime laws.

His actions on 28 other bills also diverged from the previous days’ approach, when he vetoed dozens of pro-worker Democratic bills that had been opposed by business interests.

Many of the bills he signed Friday -- including the paparazzi bill -- were opposed by Republican legislators even after changes had been made to appease industry.

“Today, I am taking action to protect California fire victims, patients and consumers,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

“As governor, I will continue to work toward ensuring California consumers are protected from unscrupulous and irresponsible practices.”

Bills signed would:

* Require insurers to pay up to two years’ worth of temporary housing costs for fire victims in a disaster area while their homes are being rebuilt. (SB 2 by Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough.)

* Extend low-cost insurance to low-income drivers with good records in San Bernardino, San Diego, Riverside, Orange, Fresno and Alameda counties by April. The bill, SB 20 by Sen. Martha Escutia (D-Whittier), expands a program pioneered in 1999 in Los Angeles County and San Francisco.

* Impose penalties of up to $2,500 per violation for using e-mail to deceive consumers into releasing private information -- such as Social Security or credit card numbers -- by posing as a business without that business’ consent. (SB 355 by Sen. Kevin Murray, D-Culver City.)

* Regulate the industry that offers people cash advances on inheritances. SB 390 by Sen. Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey) requires the companies to guarantee that customers won’t be responsible for paying back money if the inheritance doesn’t cover the cash advance.

* Require health clubs to have an automatic external defibrillator -- a device that can improve the survival rate of heart attack victims -- and teach staff how to use and maintain it. (AB 1507 by Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills.)

Another consumer bill, which Schwarzenegger signed Thursday, will require pharmacists to fill prescriptions such as morning-after birth control pills even if they have moral objections. SB 644 by Sen. Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento) allows objecting pharmacists to abstain if the pharmacy arranges for the customer to obtain the prescription somewhere else without inconvenience to the customer.

In one of his more surprising legislative actions this session, he rejected a bill favored by some of his staunchest supporters, California’s car dealers.

Schwarzenegger vetoed a processing fee increase from $45 to $55 that legislators had agreed to in exchange for dealers’ support of a package of consumer protection measures designed to safeguard car buyers from unscrupulous used-car dealers.

“I recently signed the Car Buyer Bill of Rights and [the fee increase] runs contrary to that bill’s worthy goal to improve consumer protection,” Schwarzenegger wrote in his veto message.

Peter Welch, president of the California Motor Car Dealers Assn., said the increase was intended to offset the burden of all the paperwork created by the bill of rights.

“We haven’t had an increase in the document fee for nine years,” he said, “during which time the Legislature has foisted dozens of new disclosure forms on us.”