Homeowners try to revive lawsuit against Netflix over ‘Buying Beverly Hills’ ad

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A Los Angeles family on Tuesday asked a California Court of Appeals panel to reinstate their $128 million invasion of privacy lawsuit against Netflix because their hillside home was shown in an an advertisement for the "Buying Beverly Hills" reality show without their knowledge or permission.

An attorney for Aharon Dihno and his family asked the three-judge appellate panel to send the case back to the judge who had thrown it out in 2023 and allow them to amend their claims for, among others, intrusion upon seclusion and infliction of emotional distress. The family claims they were harassed by an onslaught of visitors after their property was shown in the ad.

"Netflix continued to publish this image with complete disregard for the Dihnos' safety and their privacy," Joseph Thomas argued at the hearing in downtown LA. "The Dihnos feel unsafe in their home because Netflix refuses to take down an advertisement."

Netflix's show follows real estate agent Mauricio Umansky, husband of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Kyle RIchards, and his company, The Agency.

Though the show presents an array of lavish multimillion-dollar mansions for sale in the LA area, the Dihnos' suit centers on a house never featured in the series itself — but rather in a thumbnail image used as a "tile," the square on Netflix's website or app that viewers click on in order to play it.

The image shows an aerial view of the family's home in the Hollywood Hills, and according to the family's complaint, after it was published on the streaming service's site, people started showing up unannounced asking to view the house. Some even attempted to climb over the fence for a closer look, the family claims.

One particularly stubborn woman, they claim, refused to leave when she was denied entry and continued to ring the doorbell until Dihno called the police.

"The woman continued to ring the doorbell from the point of arrival to the time she was arrested and taken from the house," the family says in the lawsuit. Dihno and his family say they were "traumatized by the incident" and "now live in constant fear that people will demand entry, or even force entry, into their home."

Dihno says the constant attention has hurt his business, which he operates from home, and damaged his relationships with his neighbors.

The appellate panel appeared somewhat puzzled how the purported harm inflicted on the family could be attributed to Netflix rather than to the unwanted visitors. They also seemed reluctant to embrace the theory that a photo of the exterior of the house amounted to an invasion of privacy under California law if it's not "highly offensive to the reasonable person."

"Certainly, it seems to me, that the image of a beautiful house is not highly offensive to a reasonable person," Second Appellate District Associate Justice Anne Egerton observed.

Thomas responded that the actions of third parties trying to gain entry to the home is what makes Netflix's publishing of the image highly offensive.

Netflix attorney Mark Yohalem argued the plaintiffs sought an unprecedented expansion, or even a transformation, of California tort law by trying to make publication of external photos of private homes — which is a common practice both in movies and TV shows as well as in everyday social media posts by ordinary people — an intrusion up seclusion.

"That happens all the time," Yohalem told the panel. "People hike to the top of the hill and take a selfie, and behind them are all the mansions that are on the hillside. Those things cannot be an invasion of privacy because there's no reasonable expectation in a community that those things don't happen."

Moreover, Yohalem said, the plaintiffs' theory that the unwanted visitors had done a reverse Google image search to get the property's address implied that the pictures of the home were already available online, for example on real estate website such as Redfin.

Presiding Justice Lee Smalley Edmon and Associate Justice Mark Hanasono rounded out the panel, which did not indicate when or how it would rule.

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