(As seen on The Columbia Journalist.)

MANHATTAN, Jan. 29 — The recent death of actor Heath Ledger in his SoHo apartment has given new impetus to a proposed New York State law that would restrict rights to photographs and other images of deceased celebrities to only their estates or families.

Such a law would ensure, for example, that Matilda, Ledger’s 2-year-old daughter with actress Michelle Williams, could benefit from images of her father but photographers could not.

The estates of deceased celebrities and photographers have gone head-to-head in the past, most famously over the sale of a T-shirt depicting Marilyn Monroe in an Indiana court last year. Thirteen states have laws that restrict the licensing of deceased celebrities’ images by photographers, but New York is not among them.

“Enough states have it, so New York’s holdout is an inconvenience,” Alan J. Hartnick, of Abelman, Frayne and Schwab, said today at a New York State Bar Association panel on the issue.

Because no national law exists, the prevailing law is that of where the celebrity died.

Lawyers at the bar association’s annual meeting engaged in a lopsided debate of the postmortem celebrity privacy bill at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

A supporter of the bill, Hartnick cited a similar and more swiftly moving bill that concerns the use of images of fallen soldiers and veterans.

Under that bill, the name, portrait of or picture of armed forces, living or dead, cannot by used commercially by anyone but the family.

“Why should soldiers be treated differently than Heath Ledger?” he asked.

Chris Serbagi, who represented the estate of photographer Sam Shaw in the Monroe case, argued that the bill would serve only the interests of a few—two or three—people.

He claimed that a similar California statute was created and pushed by Anna Strasberg, executor of Monroe’s estate. He accused her of using the law to capitalize on Monroe, asserting that through royalties Strasberg has made untold millions.

The California law, which retroactively covers celebrities who died before 1985, was signed into law in October last year.

Monroe died in 1962 in California.

State courts in New York and California ruled in two cases last year that such statutes should not act retroactively and cover celebrities who passed away before Jan. 1, 1985.

Serbagi argued that Anna Strasberg should never have received image rights, as she was not family and was not a friend of Monroe.

Strasburg is the widow of Lee Strasburg, the acting coach to whom Monroe left a portion of her estate. Shaw was the photographer who captured many iconic photographs of Monroe. His family allowed an entrepreneur to use one image on a shirt and was sued by Strasburg.

David M. Marcus, a grandson of Shaw, also denounced the new statute, speaking from experience that a photographer’s livelihood stems from sales from and commissions for their artistry.

“There will be a chilling of free speech if this is passed in New York,” Marcus said.