April 15, 2016

We knew we’d gone through the looking glass when people in China could read a story but the people of England and Wales were not allowed to know about it or discuss it.

There’s nothing like a celebrity injunction to make a non-story into hot gossip.  We already knew that from the examples of the John Terry and Ryan Giggs cases.  What made “PJS” think it might be different in his case is hard to say.

When granting the interim injunction in January, one of the reasons given by Lord Justice Jackson was the need to protect PJS’s children from the media storm or from learning of the story through school friends and the Internet.  However the Court gave no consideration (at least none which is evident from the judgment) to the fact that the Internet is global, that the parties were well known in the entertainment business and therefore it was highly likely that it was bound to be published around the globe but that the Court’s power only extended to this jurisdiction.  No reference was made to 12(4)(a)(i) of the 1998 Human Rights Act, and the need for the Court to take account of the extent to which information had or would become available to the public.

We will hear on Monday news of the application to overturn the injunction.  We await with interest.