Inforrm’s Blog has more about a case previously noted on this site. Mark Thomson writes:
On 5 November 2010 Mr Justice Tugendhat handed down judgment in JIH v News Group Newspapers ([2010] EWHC 2818 (QB)) another privacy injunction case about anonymity. Following his recent decision in Gray v UVW ([2010] EWHC 2367 (QB)), he again decided that, despite the parties having agreed a consent order including anonymity, the interests of the public required that the claimant be named.
[…]
The crucial aspect of the judge’s reasoning (in [63] of the judgment) is difficult to follow. It is hard to see why, given the inevitable interference with the claimant’s private life, it was impossible to give an anonymised judgment giving some detail about the facts of the case – as was done in the privacy recent judgments in AMM and DFT. In terms of informing the public about what has happened in the case and why the order has been made these anonymised judgments provide more information to the public than that provided in JIH itself or in Gray. In the two earlier cases the public knows that there was a threat to public information about a sexual relationship which resulted in an injunction being granted. In the two cases in which the names of the claimants are given the public knows nothing of the underlying facts and so, has no idea about how the court is balancing privacy and public interest on a practical level.
Read more here.
Image credit: “anonymity” by kitakitts, Flickr, used under Creative Commons License