Prying eyes: Neighbors win privacy feud with UK Tate gallery

LONDON (AP) — The U.K. Supreme Court says people who live in glass houses have a right to privacy too.

The court ruled Wednesday that a viewing platform at London’s Tate Modern art gallery made residents of glass-walled luxury apartments next door feel like animals in a zoo, and impeded “the ordinary use and enjoyment” of their homes.

The justices overturned earlier lower court rulings that sided with Tate Modern in the long-running privacy battle between the gallery — one of London’s biggest tourist attractions — and residents of four apartments in the neighboring Neo Bankside complex.

Justice George Leggatt said that the platform is visited by hundreds of thousands of people a year, who “frequently take photographs of the interiors of the flats and sometimes post them on social media."

“It is not difficult to imagine how oppressive living in such circumstances would feel for any ordinary person — much like being on display in a zoo,” he wrote in the court's majority ruling.

“It is beyond doubt that the viewing and photography which take place from the Tate’s building cause a substantial interference with the ordinary use and enjoyment of the claimants’ properties."

The court ruled that the gallery had violated “the common law of private nuisance.” Three judges backed the majority decision and two dissented.

Tate Modern opened in 2000 in a former power station on the south bank of the River Thames. It helped transform the surrounding Bankside neighborhood from a riverside backwater into an arts and nightlife hub dotted with luxury apartment towers.

The viewing terrace is part of a pyramid-shaped extension that opened in 2016 at the gallery, which sees more than 5 million visitors a year. Neo Bankside was completed a few years earlier.

Lawyers for the residents...