Meanwhile, Kim Waite, a senior associate in RPC’s media team, explained that arguing for one’s children to be protected from embarrassment remained a “highly relevant factor” in whether to grant a privacy injunction.
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Any trial of those claims is likely to be overseen by a High Court judge – who could decide to lift the anonymity injunction after analysing all evidence from both sides.
OK, there were commercial motives as much as press freedom and freedom of expression involved, but that doesn’t devalue the legitimate arguments in favour of publishing.
Lawyers for News Group Newspapers, publishers of The Sun on Sunday, then asked three appeal judges to lift the ban after the man’s identity emerged online.
There is not, on its own, any public interest in the legal sense in the disclosure of private sexual encounters even if they involve infidelity or more than one person at the same time, however famous the individual(s) involved.
That is different if the person has a bearing on public life or has presented a misleading public image.
We do not comment on individual accounts, or ongoing legal issues, for privacy and security reasons.
In their ruling, Supreme Court judges Lord Mance, Lord Neuberger, Lady Hale, Lord Reed agree and Lord Toulson agreed that publishing the story is “contrary to the interests of PJS’s children” and in breach of the requirement to “show an exceptional public interest for the intrusion” set out in the Editors’ Code of Practice to which NGN has subscribed.
“This would be likely to add greatly and on a potentially enduring basis to the intrusiveness and distress felt by the appellant, his partner and, by way of increased media attention now and/or in the future, their children”.
They also said the injunction was “appropriate” to protect the man, who was referred to by the court only as PJS, his partner and their young children.
London-based tabloid newspapers, which have a long history of publishing stories about the sex lives of celebrities, reacted with fury, with the Sun calling the ruling “draconian” and the Daily Mail branding it “ludicrous”.
However, the UK’s highest court decided that by a majority of four to one that the injunction should be maintained after the Court of Appeal erred in its application of the law.
‘The Supreme Court has acknowledged that the world of social media and the internet is effectively uncontrollable and the courts need to be ready to change their approach as a effect.
But now the details are available online and overseas…… This was granted by the Court of Appeal on 22 January and was effective in England and Wales.
That decision followed a Court of Appeal ruling in April that found the injunction should be lifted as the couples’ identities had already been widely circulated on the internet.
The law also meant that courts have to give particular weight to newspapers’ freedom of expression rights when deciding these matters.
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The legal battle has major implications for the balance between privacy and the right to publish in the United Kingdom.
