Privacy tort
« Previous EntriesRooney tunes
Monday, September 6th, 2010The ever-excellent Inforrm blog fillets the UK tabloid media for their expose of footballer Wayne Rooney’s affair. It’s plainly private… so what was that public interest justification again?
Price wins chocolate fish
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010In a recent speech Law Commission President Sir Geoffrey Palmer laid down a challenge: define “privacy”. He promised a chocolate fish for the best entry. His view is that privacy defies definition. I proved him wrong. This is the correct definition of privacy:
Privacy is what people believe they have lost when they complain about their […]
Talkin’ bout a revolution
Friday, April 16th, 2010Check 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 […]
Law Commission makes privacy recommendations
Friday, February 26th, 2010There’s another report from the Law Commission on privacy: this one the culmination of many of the others.
The report’s not up on the website yet, but it seems that the key recommendations are:
no change to the tort established in Hosking v Runting.
creation of a new offence of trespassing on someone’s property to install a surveillance […]
UK Parliamentary committee recommends reform of media regulation
Thursday, February 25th, 2010The 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 damages awarded.
Privacy […]
Chasing Ali
Monday, February 15th, 2010The latest development in the Alison Mau saga reads like a media law exam question.
On Breakfast TV she took a swipe at Woman’s Day, saying its “paparazzi photographer has been stalking me, my children and my friends for a month now, quite possibly more, following me to the supermarket, the kids’ tennis and touch rugby, […]
Another interesting thing about the Terry case
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010Look 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, 2010A 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 injunction. […]
Down, Tiger!
Saturday, December 12th, 2009Tiger 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: to increase […]
Trivia question for privacy law geeks
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009No doubt you’ve heard of the famous 1890 Harvard Law Review article “The Right to Privacy” by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, which paved the way for the privacy tort in the US and has been described as the “most influential law review article of all”.
But do you know what they wrote before that?
Turns out […]