All posts
10.10.23
Court grants injunction to prevent details of affair being disclosed in blackmail case
In JRV & ARC v BRG [2023] EWHC 2238 (KB) Mr Justice Ritchie granted an interim privacy injunction preventing the publication of information about an extra-marital affair. The judgment, handed down on 8 September 2023, is a concise but comprehensive judgment traversing the core principles of privacy injunctions. Facts In January 2022 the anonymised First…
Read more6.09.23
I have been accused of a crime: will it be made public?
If you have been accused of a crime, whether this information will become public is likely to depend on whether you have been charged or not. Pre-charge: police investigation The recent case of Bloomberg LP v ZXC [2022] UKSC 5 makes it clear that generally there is an expectation that during the police investigation, someone…
Read more21.07.23
Court of Appeal overturns decision of High Court judge to refuse to accept undertakings in harassment claim
We previously published a press release on behalf of our client Dr Erica Smith following the outcome of her harassment and privacy claim against former colleague and UCL academic Dr Christopher Backhouse. The claim concerned a sustained campaign of online harassment, which included the creation of Twitter accounts impersonating Dr Smith and offering sexual services…
Read more14.07.23
Could The Sun be facing the “mother of all privacy claims”?
On 11 July 2023, on the News Agents podcast, broadcaster Jon Sopel asked whether The Sun could be facing “the mother of all libel claims” for publishing allegations against a then unnamed BBC presenter. On 13 July 2023, Vicky Flind confirmed that her husband Huw Edwards was the broadcaster in question. It might be too…
Read more26.04.22
Closed judgments and national security
In this blog we examine the decisions in The Queen on the application of Privacy International v Investigatory Powers Tribunal [2022] EWHC 770 QB and Her Majesty’s Attorney General for England and Wales v British Broadcasting Corporation [2022] EWHC 826 (QB), and the topic of closed judgments. Neither judgment fully explains the reasoning behind their…
Read more7.03.22
Lexis Nexis Interview: Reasonable expectation of privacy in information relating to criminal investigations (Bloomberg LP v ZXC)
Percy Preston of Brett Wilson LLP is interviewed about the Supreme Court’s decision in Bloomberg LP v ZXC [2022] UKSC 5. What was the key issue on appeal? The central issue on the appeal was whether, in general, a person under criminal investigation has a reasonable expectation of privacy in respect of information…
Read more4.02.22
In defence of privacy and the judiciary: the fall-out from HRH the Duchess of Sussex v Associated Newspapers Ltd
Brett Wilson LLP partner Iain Wilson tries to unpick some of the misreporting following the Court of Appeal’s decision in HRH the Duchess of Sussex v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2021] EWCA Civ 1810 Here we are again. The press doesn’t like us having private lives and the government doesn’t like judges making decisions it disagrees…
Read more27.11.20
Divisional Court overturns SDT findings against Ryan Beckwith and warns against the regulation of private lives
Ryan Beckwith emerged victorious from the Divisional Court today having had the limited findings against him made by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) last year reversed. In a landmark joint judgment of the President of the Queen’s Bench Division, Lady Justice Sharp DBE, and the Judge in Charge of the Administrative Court (Beckwith v Solicitors…
Read more29.05.20
Uncle ordered to pay niece £15,000 for sharing private information on Facebook
In JQL v NTP [2020] EWHC 1349 (QB), the Claimant sued the Defendant, her uncle, for publishing a post on Facebook that identified her as having received “treatment for mental health and self-harm”, that was said to be a misuse of her private information. The post was part of a thread between family members, several…
Read more23.09.19
Gender Identity Clinic faces privacy claims following ‘bcc’ data leak
The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust has admitted accidentally sending an email containing the email addresses of nearly 2,000 patients receiving treatment at its Fulham Palace Road Gender Identity Clinic. The email in question, sent on 6 September 2019, concerned an art competition, but was inadvertently “cc-ed” (open copied) to recipients, rather than “bcc-ed…
Read moreLegal Disclaimer
Articles are intended as an introduction to the topic and do not constitute legal advice.
