| Ferdinand v Mirror Group Newspapers | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Court | High Court of Justice (Queen's Bench Division) |
| Decided | 29 September 2011 |
| Citation(s) | [2011] EWHC 2454 QB [1] |
| Court membership | |
| Judge(s) sitting | The Hon. Mr. Justice Nicol |
Ferdinand v Mirror Group Newspapers is a 2011 High Court case in which the English footballer Rio Ferdinand was unsuccessful in preventing the publication of a tabloid newspaper story revealing details of an alleged sexual relationship. [2]
On 25 April 2010, the Sunday Mirror ran an article entitled "My Affair with England Captain Rio", in which interior designer Carly Storey gave an account of an alleged relationship with Rio Ferdinand. [1] Ferdinand described the article as "gross invasion of my privacy" and brought legal action in which he sought damages and a worldwide injunction against further publication. Ferdinand said that he had not met Ms. Storey for six years at the time of publication of the Sunday Mirror article, and had exchanged text messages with her between that time and his appointment as captain of the England national football team in February 2010. He claimed that there had been a misuse of private information. Ms. Storey received a payment of £16,000 for her interview with the Sunday Mirror, which had been sold to the newspaper after she had contacted the publicist Max Clifford. Lawyers acting for Mirror Group Newspapers argued that he had been appointed as captain of the England football team on the basis that he was a "reformed and responsible" character. The case centred on whether the Sunday Mirror had a public interest defence based on Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to freedom of expression, or whether Ferdinand was entitled to privacy in accordance with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to respect for private and family life [2] [3] [4]
On 29 September 2011, Mr. Justice Nicol ruled in favour of the defendant, Mirror Group Newspapers, saying: "Overall, in my judgment, the balancing exercise favours the defendant's right of freedom of expression over the claimant's right of privacy." [5]
Lawyers acting for Ferdinand issued a statement saying that he was "extremely disappointed" with the decision, and announced an intention to appeal. Costs in the case were estimated at around £500,000. [2] Tina Weaver, the editor of the Sunday Mirror, commented: "There has never been greater scrutiny of the media than now, and we applaud this ruling in recognising the important role a free press has to play in a democratic society." [6]
Media commentators described the victory of the Sunday Mirror in the case as significant in the wake of the News International phone hacking scandal and the 2011 British privacy injunctions controversy. [7]
Rio Gavin Ferdinand is an English former professional footballer who played as a centre-back, and is now a television pundit for BT Sport. He played 81 times for the England national team between 1997 and 2011, and was a member of three FIFA World Cup squads. He is one of the most decorated English footballers of all time and regarded by many as one of England's greatest ever players.
The Daily Mirror is a British national daily tabloid newspaper. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was simply The Mirror. It had an average daily print circulation of 716,923 in December 2016, dropping to 587,803 the following year. Its Sunday sister paper is the Sunday Mirror. Unlike other major British tabloids such as The Sun and the Daily Mail, the Mirror has no separate Scottish edition; this function is performed by the Daily Record and the Sunday Mail, which incorporate certain stories from the Mirror that are of Scottish significance.
The Sunday Herald was a Scottish Sunday newspaper, published between 7 February 1999 and 2 September 2018. Originally a broadsheet, it was published in compact format from 20 November 2005. The paper was known for having combined a centre-left stance with support for Scottish devolution, and later Scottish independence. The last edition of the newspaper was published on 2 September 2018 and it was replaced with Sunday editions of The Herald and The National.
Garry William Flitcroft is an English football manager and former professional player who played as a midfielder.
Giles Robin Patrick Coren is a British columnist, food writer, and television and radio presenter. He has been a restaurant critic for The Times newspaper since 2002, and was named Food and Drink Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2005.
Sir David Eady, KC is a retired High Court judge in England and Wales. As a judge, he is known for having presided over many high-profile libel and privacy cases.
Modern libel and slander laws in many countries are originally descended from English defamation law. The history of defamation law in England is somewhat obscure; civil actions for damages seem to have been relatively frequent as far back as the Statute of Gloucester in the reign of Edward I (1272–1307). The law of libel emerged during the reign of James I (1603–1625) under Attorney General Edward Coke who started a series of libel prosecutions. Scholars frequently attribute strict English defamation law to James I's outlawing of duelling. From that time, both the criminal and civil remedies have been found in full operation.
Mosley v News Group Newspapers [2008] EWHC 1777 (QB) was an English High Court case in which the former President of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, Max Mosley, challenged the News of the World. The newspaper had exposed his involvement in what it called a sadomasochistic sex act involving several female prostitutes when they published a video of the incident recorded by one of the women and published details of the incident in their newspaper, wrongly describing it as "Nazi-themed". The case resulted in Mosley being awarded £60,000 in damages.
Privacy in English law is a rapidly developing area of English law that considers situations where individuals have a legal right to informational privacy - the protection of personal or private information from misuse or unauthorized disclosure. Privacy law is distinct from those laws such as trespass or assault that are designed to protect physical privacy. Such laws are generally considered as part of criminal law or the law of tort. Historically, English common law has recognized no general right or tort of privacy, and offered only limited protection through the doctrine of breach of confidence and a "piecemeal" collection of related legislation on topics like harassment and data protection. The introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated into English law the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 8.1 of the ECHR provided an explicit right to respect for a private life. The Convention also requires the judiciary to "have regard" to the Convention in developing the common law.
Mosley v United Kingdom [2011] 53 E.H.R.R. 30 was a 2011 decision in the European Court of Human Rights regarding the right to privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. An application to the court was made by Max Mosley, the former president of the FIA, after his successful breach of confidence legal case against the News of the World. In that case, the court unanimously rejected the proposition that Article 8 required member states of the Council of Europe to legislate to prevent newspapers printing stories regarding individual private lives without first warning the individuals concerned. It instead held that it fell within each state's margin of appreciation to determine whether to legislate on that matter.
Greene v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2004] EWCA Civ 1462 is a case of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales that governs the use of injunctions against publication in alleged defamation cases. Greene, a businesswoman, sought an injunction against Associated Newspapers Ltd to prevent them publishing alleged links with Peter Foster; while they claimed to have emails showing links, she asserted that they were false. The test at the time for a preliminary injunction in defamation cases was Bonnard v Perryman, where it was established that the applicant has to show "a real prospect of success" at trial. The Human Rights Act 1998 established that judges should consider whether applicants are "more likely than not" to succeed at trial, a test applied to confidentiality cases in Cream Holdings Ltd v Banerjee and the Liverpool Post and Echo Ltd. Greene claimed that the Cream test should be applied rather than the Bonnard test.
Sir Michael George Tugendhat, styled The Hon. Mr Justice Tugendhat, and referred to as Tugendhat J in legal writing, is a retired High Court judge in England and Wales. He was the High Court's senior media judge, taking over that role from Mr Justice Eady on 1 October 2010.
The British privacy injunctions controversy began in early 2011, when London-based tabloid newspapers published stories about anonymous celebrities that were intended to flout what are commonly known in English law as super-injunctions, where the claimant could not be named, and carefully omitting details that could not legally be published. In April and May 2011, users of non-UK hosted websites, including the social media website Twitter, began posting material connecting various British celebrities with injunctions relating to a variety of potentially scandalous activities. Details of the alleged activities by those who had taken out the gagging orders were also published in the foreign press, as well as in Scotland, where the injunctions had no legal force.
CTB v. News Group Newspapers is an English legal case between Manchester United player Ryan Giggs, given the pseudonym CTB, and defendants News Group Newspapers Limited and model Imogen Thomas.
Operation Motorman was a 2003 investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office into allegations of offences under the Data Protection Act by the British press.
Hugh Richard Edward Tomlinson KC is a barrister in England and Wales, an English translator of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze and a founding member of Matrix Chambers. He is a specialist in media and information law including defamation, confidence, privacy and data protection.
NEJ v BDZ (Helen Wood) ([2011] EWHC 1972 (QB) is a 2011 High Court case involving issues of privacy in English law.
WER v REW was an anonymised legal case in which Chris Hutcheson, represented by Hugh Tomlinson, QC, of Schillings, took out an injunction to prevent Popdog Ltd from publishing details regarding his private life, and was heard before Justice Sir Charles Grey in January 2009. Hutcheson – Gordon Ramsay's former business partner and father-in-law – gained an injunction but it was later partially lifted, and ultimately overturned in the Court of Appeal, with Hutcheson being publicly named by the judge.
PJS v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2016] UKSC 26 is a UK constitutional law case in which an anonymised privacy injunction was obtained by a claimant, identified in court documents as "PJS", to prohibit publication of the details of a sexual encounter between him and two other people. Media outside England and Wales identified PJS as David Furnish.
CDE & FGH v Mirror Group Newspapers and LMN [2010] EWHC 3308 is an English privacy law case. The case was a misuse of private information claim in which two claimants sought an interim injunction preventing the two defendants from publishing private information about them.