Month: March 2016

27.03.16

Burrell v Clifford: Costs and proportionality in low value privacy law cases

Last month PR guru Max Clifford was ordered to pay the former Royal Butler Paul Burrell £5,000 compensation for the unauthorised disclosure of private information contained within a letter Mr Burrell had sent him.  The judgment on liability and quantum (Burrell v Clifford [2016] EWHC 294 (Ch)) can be found here, although Mr Justice Mann’s earlier…

23.03.16

Privacy law: Supreme Court refuses Mirror permission to appeal phone hacking damages

The country’s highest court has refused MGN Limited permission to appeal the decision in Representative Claimants -v- Mirror Group Newspapers Ltd [2015] EWCA Civ 1291 – the Court of Appeal’s decision regarding the appropriate level of damages in eight phone-hacking ‘test cases’.  This decision itself was an unsuccessful appeal by MGN against the High Court decision in Gulatti & Ors v…

Free wi-fi providers unlikely to be liable for copyright infringement

Maciej Szpunar, an Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), has recommended to the Court that providers of free wi-fi should not be held responsible for copyright infringement committed over their networks. The recommendation comes midway through the case of Tobias McFadden -v- Sony Music Entertainment Germany GmbH C-484/14, which…

Pilot scheme to allow cameras into Crown Courts for the first time

A three-month pilot scheme allowing filming in Crown Courts has been proposed by the Ministry of Justice in a bid for more “openness and transparency” in the legal system.  Pending approval from the House of Commons cameras would be allowed to film the sentencing remarks of judges at the pilot courts of the Old Bailey, Southwark,…

22.03.16

Costs in criminal law cases: the real two-tier system

In April 2014 Nigel Evans MP was acquitted of serious sexual assault allegations.  He berated his own party’s changes to legal aid costs because they deprived him of recovering his £100,000 legal costs in defending himself.  He later conceded that he ‘probably’ would have voted for Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders 2012 (LASPO)…

Former Sun editor convicted of breaching victim anonymity law in Adam Johnson case

Former Sun editor David Dinsmore has been found guilty of breaching the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 after the tabloid printed a pixelated photograph of convicted footballer Adam Johnson’s teenage victim.  Mr Johnson is currently awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of sexual activity with a child. Durham constabulary initiated a prosecution against Dinsmore when the photo,…

14.03.16

Jimmy White libel claim settles: substantial damages agreed

Express Newspapers have agreed to pay snooker player Jimmy White substantial damages for a 2012 Daily Star article which implied that Mr White had dishonestly provided inside information to his friend to allow him to place bets. The Star published an apology in 2014, but the level of damages could not be agreed.  Halfway through a High Court trial to…

Ex-husband awarded £5,000 damages for Facebook libel

The case of Stocker v Stocker, the first libel trial of 2016, provides a stark warning to those who post defamatory material on social media. In this case the Court held that the claimant had been defamed by his ex-wife and he was awarded £5,000 of damages. Background The claimant and defendant were formerly married,…

12.03.16

Google extends "right to be forgotten" to all versions of its search engine

Google has succumbed to pressure from European data regulators and announced a wider system of delisting where it agrees to remove search engine results under the so-called “right to be forgotten” principle. Where Google agrees to delist results these will now be filtered from all versions of Google when a search is conducted in the…