It has become increasingly popular for celebrities such as Colin Montgomerie, Tiger Woods and John Terry to apply for injunctions and “super-injunctions” (so called because even their existence cannot be reported) to protect their right to privacy. Such applications have been made with growing frequency by celebrities as they try to protect their privacy during relationship breakdown. Whilst the public will be interested to hear the juicy intimacies of a celebrity’s relationship, should this outweigh the individual’s right to privacy?
The new coalition government have announced a consultation on a new defamation bill, amidst concerns that as the Courts are too willingly granting injunctions and therefore restricting the freedom of the press. There has been talk that in cases such as Colin Montgomerie’s that judges have in effect created a “privacy law” by judicial decision rather than through Parliament. Consequently, the most senior civil court judge in England and Wales has launched a review into the use of injunctions and their impact upon press freedom.
In John Terry’s case a temporary injunction was dismissed by Mr Justice Tugendhat as he felt that an injunction was “not necessary or proportionate having regard to the level of gravity of interference with the private life of the applicant”. In Montgomerie’s case an injunction was granted to prevent a tabloid newspaper publishing a story about his private life. Clearly in the future applicants seeking an injunction must prove that the press’s reporting of a case is unnecessarily probing into their private life and that they are seeking to protect something more important that their reputation or commercial interests e.g. the welfare of any children involved.
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