Baldwin’s Civil Trial in Assault Case Opens

The courtroom battle between Alec Baldwin and a photographer with whom he tangled outside the actor’s Woodland Hills home was framed Thursday as not only a dispute over who attacked whom, but also a debate over the fuzzy issue of a movie star’s private life.

“He may have a certain celebrity status, but this was one instance where he did have a reasonable expectation of privacy,” Philip D. Weiss, Baldwin’s lawyer, told a Van Nuys jury as the civil trial opened.

Alan Zanger ruined the day by parking outside Baldwin’s home and filming the actor and his wife, Kim Basinger, bringing home their newborn daughter, Ireland, said Weiss, calling the photographer’s action invasion of privacy.

“I don’t think his claim has any merit, and the jury will see that,” Zanger’s lawyer, Leonard Steiner, said in an interview. Zanger grilled prospective jurors on their feelings about the death of Princess Diana, which some have blamed on paparazzi. Zanger, 53, is seeking damages for assault, battery, negligence and infliction of emotional distress.

The photographer was legally parked across from Baldwin’s home, and well within his constitutional rights, when he turned his palm-sized video camera on the celebrity household and filmed the couple’s return from the hospital with their infant Oct. 26, 1995, Steiner said.

Baldwin, 40, noticed Zanger’s customized pickup truck and covered the camper’s windows with shaving cream. What happened next depends on whom you believe.

Zanger says he was terrified and jumped out of the pickup so he could get away. He says Baldwin attacked him, smashing him in the face, then kicking him in the rear.

Baldwin has said that he saw Zanger get out of the car with his camera, and that he approached him to tell him to stop filming. He said Zanger continued to film, then quickly raised his camera, startling the actor and leading him to slap it away, accidentally hitting the photographer in the face.

Baldwin was arrested after the incident, but a jury acquitted him, with several jurors saying Zanger’s credibility was lost when he admittedly exaggerated accounts of the confrontation in a news interview.

As the trial opened Thursday, Steiner raised the specter of Diana’s death in a car accident while being chased by celebrity photographers, asking whether that incident had affected prospective jurors to the extent that they might hold it against Zanger.

Zanger’s lawyers portrayed him as a Vietnam veteran who went on to become a professional photographer. Steiner stressed his client’s college education and his years on the staff of United Press International, and said Zanger’s photographs had been published on the front pages of “just about every major newspaper and magazine around the world.”

“We’re not talking about someone who’s not a member of the legitimate press,” he added. “We’re talking about someone who is an esteemed and established member of the legitimate press.”

On the stand, Zanger stressed that confrontation is not his style. He said he prefers staking out his subjects, stealthily snapping his shots and disappearing before they know he has been there.

His testimony will continue today. Baldwin is expected to testify next week.