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Privacy tort

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Pike River privacy II

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

I’ve since discussed Nicole Moreham’s post (below) with another privacy expert, who agrees with her wholeheartedly. For myself, I’m not quite so sure. Certainly the grieving families were caught in a distraught and vulnerable moment. I’ll assume that there was no way for them to use to escape the assembled media. Coverage of children and those […]

Pike River privacy breach

Friday, November 26th, 2010

My colleague, privacy expert Dr Nicole Moreham, reckons the media are guilty of breach of privacy with their splashy coverage of the victims’ grief-stricken families emerging from the briefing where they were informed of their loved ones’ fate. She has kindly allowed me to cross-post (original source here): There would be few New Zealanders who […]

Rooney tunes

Monday, September 6th, 2010

The 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, 2010

In 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 […]

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 […]

Law Commission makes privacy recommendations

Friday, February 26th, 2010

There’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 […]

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 […]

Chasing Ali

Monday, February 15th, 2010

The 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 […]

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 […]

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