No, she cannot cancel the permission slip. The court decided that a special New York law on privacy specifically says that a parent's written permission is all that's needed for using a child's photo. Once the parent signs, it's a done deal. This law was intended to give businesses confidence that contracts involving child models are final and can't just be canceled years later. The old rule that let kids cancel contracts doesn't apply here because this specific law overrides it.

Yes, she should be able to cancel it. The judges who disagreed said that the most important job of the law is to protect kids, not businesses. Kids have always had the right to get out of contracts. They argued that the law requiring a parent's signature was meant to be an *extra* protection for the child, not something that takes away the child's right to change their mind later, especially if the parent made a bad decision that ended up hurting the child.

Yes, Brooke can't change her mind about the pictures because her mom said it was okay to use them. The law says if a parent agrees to something like this for their child, it's like the child agreed too. The court says the photographer can use the pictures, but not in bad magazines or to sell stuff.

I disagree. I think protecting kids is more important than business. The law should let kids change their minds about things like this, especially if it might make the kid look bad later. The higher court's decision to stop the photographer from using the pictures to sell things was right.

No, the statute abrogates the minor's common-law right to disaffirm the consent. While infants at common law could disaffirm contracts made on their behalf, a legislature may abrogate that right by statute. The Civil Rights Law created a new cause of action for invasion of privacy but also expressly provided a method for obtaining consent for minors through a parent or guardian. By creating this specific statutory framework, the legislature intended to provide certainty to the industry that such consents would be binding and not subject to later disaffirmance. The court rejected the applicability of General Obligations Law § 3-105, which requires court approval for infant performer contracts, noting that the legislature has consistently distinguished between child performers and child models, and applying such a requirement would be impractical for the modeling industry.

Yes, a minor retains the common-law right to disaffirm the consent for future use. The dissent argues that the State's role as *parens patriae* and its strong policy of protecting children should preserve the near-absolute common-law right of an infant to disaffirm a contract. The parental consent requirement in the Civil Rights Law should be viewed as an additional protection for the child, not as a complete abrogation of their common-law rights. Because the statute does not contain express language eliminating the right to disaffirm—unlike other statutes where the legislature has done so—the right should remain intact to protect a child from a parent's improvident or exploitative decision.

Yes. The plaintiff, as an infant model, may not disaffirm the prior unrestricted consent executed by her parent because the consents were valid and unrestricted as to time and use. The legislative intent of sections 50 and 51 of the Civil Rights Law is to provide a method for obtaining an infant's consent to avoid liability. The parent's consent is binding on the infant, and no disaffirmance is allowed because the consents in this case complied with the statutory requirements. The order of the Appellate Division should be modified to strike the further injunction against the use of the photographs for advertising and trade, and as so modified, the order should be affirmed.

I dissent because I believe the interests of society and the State in protecting children must be placed above concerns for trade or commercialism. The State has an obligation to afford extraordinary protection to minors. A minor should have the right to disaffirm their parent's consent with respect to future use of a nude photograph taken of them, unless the Legislature clearly intended to abrogate that right when enacting sections 50 and 51 of the Civil Rights Law. There is no indication the Legislature intended to eliminate a minor's long-standing common law right to disaffirm a contract that may exploit or be detrimental to the child's best interests. The order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed.

Shields v. Gross

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