Friday 15 April 2011

Alphabet soup: Listing all the privacy injunctions


Judith Townend has compiled a list of privacy injunction hearings on her Meeja Law website.

It reads a bit like alphabet soup. For example: RJA v AJR, (4 March 2011); YYG v PJK¸(11 March 2011): ZAM v CFW and another (7 March 2011): YYZ v YVR (4 February 2011); OPQ v BJM (2 February 2011).

She points out: "Limited information is available about privacy injunction hearings in British courts but sometimes the press cries ‘super injunction’ when it’s simply not.

"A super injunction is where its very existence cannot be reported – as in the cases involving Trafigura (2009) and John Terry (2010)."

I like the way The Times described super-injunctions in a leader: "Even Donald Rumsfeld would be shocked at how the British public are being kept in the dark. As judges grant more super-injunctions to frisky millionaire footballers, high-flying bankers and tycoons that enable these men (and they are mostly men) to shield their affairs from the public’s gaze — for no better reason than that it would embarrass them, or might dent their sponsorship deals were their affairs to come to light — the public not only don’t know who these people are, they don’t even know they don’t know."

Not all the privacy hearings involve the press and some are linked to alleged blackmail threats.

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