The first part of this provision establishes a normative prohibition to violate a person's privacy, in any of the alternatives that define, in the continuation of the law, "invasion of privacy". This is an element in the normative basis of the tort under the law. To the essence of "infringement of the privacy of others" and to which the second section of the law relates as detailed above, the first section of the Prohibition of Violating this essence is added.
Breach of statutory duty?
- Before I go into the depth of the continuation of the provision of the section, I have found room to remove from the path a matter that has been unjustly placed in it. I did not find in the plaintiffs' argument that since the defendant violated this prohibition, it should be regarded as someone who wronged the plaintiffs as well as the tort of breach of a statutory duty. This additional tort is anchored in In section 63 To the Ordinance The Torts [New version]. She instructs: "A breach of a statutory duty is a person who does not fulfill a duty imposed on him under any legislation and the legislation is intended for the benefit or protection of another person, and the breach caused that person damage of the type or nature of the damage intended by the statute".
The plaintiffs' mistake is that the purpose of this tort is not to "deepen" the liability in torts of someone who has already been found liable for a tort outside the Torts Ordinance. What is the significance of establishing liability for the tort of invasion of privacy, for example, or libel, if the defendant did not act in contravention of the provisions of the Protection of Privacy Law or the Prohibition of Defamation Law? Simply put, anyone who is found responsible for any of these torts finds himself, against his will, also at the foundations of the tort from the Torts Ordinance. It is clear that this is not what the legislature intended in its establishment the tort of breach of statutory duty. His only intention was to enable the imposition of liability in torts in a place where the statutory duty that was breached does not entail such liability, in part or in share. This is not the situation in the matter of the torts attributed to the defendant in this suit before me. There was, therefore, no room to add to the cauldron the tort under section 63 of the Ordinance.
- It is not superfluous to note, although this was not what the plaintiffs intended in their argument, that in any case it is not possible to hold on to the "framework" torts of the Torts Ordinance, such as the tort of breach of statutory duty, as a lifeline if the foundations of the specific torts outside the Ordinance are not met. In this case, the case law applied a clear rule of "singularity of cause" and it means that if, for example, a defense against liability for defamation arises, a plaintiff cannot claim that his libel amounts to another tort in tort, so that in any case it will be possible to find the defendant liable.
True, a breach of a statutory duty is not a "residual" tort, which enters the picture whenever it is not "possible" to impose liability for individual torts. On the contrary, if there is no room to impose liability for these torts, the law denies resorting to an alternative legal channel and is still allowed to settle accounts with the defendant. "Frame" torts are therefore not a plaintiff's refuge. They do not apply alongside the relevant individual torts. This is the meaning of "uniqueness of cause", which blocks the possibility of requiring an alternative cause of action when the cause of action is closed and the law is unified in this case (Civil Appeal Authority 7205/16 Dr. Schwartz v. Dr. Zoller, inparagraphs D and E of the judgment of Deputy President Rubinstein (published on the Judiciary website, April 9, 2017). See and compare also Civil Appeal (Beer-Sheva District) 24714-03-19 State of Israel v. Moyal, in paragraph 29 of the judgment of the Honorable Judge Geula Levin (published in the databases June 10, 2019)).