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Injunctions

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Post at your own risk!

Thursday, February 13th, 2014

An interesting warning from the Northern Ireland High Court: Before I go on … I should say that anyone who uses Facebook does so at his or her peril. There is no guarantee that any comments posted to be viewed by friends will only be seen by those friends. Furthermore it is difficult to see […]

Digital harrassment remedies coming

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

Justice Minister Judith Collins has (by and large) accepted the Law Commission’s recommendations to better protect victims of cyber-harrassment. (I have explained and defended and critiqued and defended again the Law Commission’s proposals elsewhere). Note that this is not the same as the Law Commission’s recently confirmed plan to set up a one-stop regulator for the […]

Sneaky devices 3

Thursday, November 17th, 2011

The cameraman in the middle of cuppagate, Bradley Ambrose, is reportedly seeking a court declaration that he committed no crime because the recorded conversation wasn’t private. (That is, that the conversation did not occur in circumstances in which any party ought reasonably to expect that the communication may be intercepted by some other person not having the express […]

Free speech vs privacy

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

A New Mexico man puts up a billboard of himself holding the outline of a baby, saying: This Would Have Been a Picture Of My 2-Month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To NOT KILL Our Child! His ex-partner (who says she had a miscarriage not an abortion) sues for harrassment and invasion of […]

Super-injunctions debunked

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

If you want to know what’s going on with so-called “super injunctions” (that is, court orders that not only suppress particular information but also suppress the fact of  their existence), I suggest you don’t read the British press. Or anything that comes out of it. The British papers are so incensed by the idea of the […]

Talkin’ bout a revolution

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Check out this fascinating panel discussion about super injunctions and the laws of libel and privacy, hosted by the Frontline Club, involving successful defamation defendant Simon Singh, Carter-Ruck’s Nigel Tait, the Guardian’s investigations editor David Leigh, and media lawyer David Hooper. The debate comes amid British government proposals for libel reform (not enacted in time […]

UK Parliamentary committee recommends reform of media regulation

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

The British Culture, Media and Sport Committee has released its report into press standards, privacy and libel. Recommendations: Privacy tort: No change. In particular, no legal requirement for the media to give notice to people who’s privacy they’re about to invade in an upcoming story, though a failure to provide such notice should hike any […]

Another interesting thing about the Terry case

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Look at the standard the judge applies to the injunction: the rule in Bonnard v Perryman. This is a famous case that sets the bar very high in defamation cases. Bonnard holds that no pre-trial injunction will be granted in a defamation case unless it’s entirely clear that no defence might apply. In practice, this […]

Super-Injunction denied

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

A fascinating insight into super-injunctions English football captain John Terry’s failed attempt to obtain an injunction gagging revelation of his affair with his team-mate’s ex contains a lot of fascinating information about so-called super-injunctions. A super-injunction is a gag that not only prevents particular information from being published, it also stops anyone even mentioning the […]

Down, Tiger!

Saturday, December 12th, 2009

Tiger Woods has obtained an injunction against the publication of some private details in the UK.  Media lawyer Mark Stephens suggests that it concerns information that’s being freely reported in the US. If that’s so, the injunction seems futile, and therefore legally unjustifiable. It also seems strategically dopey. It can only serve to achieve something I had thought impossible: […]

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