High Court of UK orders the Sun newspaper to reveal knowledge of theft of Member of Parliament
November 3, 2012 |
The Guardian reports that Mr Justice Vos has issued a temporary injunction against the Sun Newspaper preventing it from publishing any confidential information on the phone of Siobhain McDonagh. It appears to be the start of an action for misuse of private information.
The story provides:
The Sun newspaper has been ordered by a high court judge to reveal what it knows about the alleged theft of a mobile phone belonging to Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh, which was reportedly handed to the paper by a member of the public.
Mr Justice Vos also on Wednesday issued a temporary injunction against the Sun preventing the tabloid publishing any material in relation to confidential information on the phone.
At the same time Vos issued an order barring reporting of witness statements submitted to court in relation to the theft to prevent potential criminal proceedings being compromised by “the side wind of civil proceedings”.
McDonagh’s phone was allegedly stolen in October 2010. But it did not emerge that it had been handed over to the Sun by an unidentified individual until the Metropolitan police discovered the connection this summer as part of its Operation Tuleta investigation into alleged computer hacking and other criminal breaches of privacy by newspapers.
Details on the case have so far been scant, but in a 45-minute hearing at the high court on Wednesday, it became evident that the phone had not been handed back to McDonagh and News Group Newspapers, the News International subsidiary that publishes the Sun, has been given 21 days to explain what happened to it.
Vos said the paper might say “we chucked it away in a bin or never had in the first place” but that it needed to provide the court with details either way.
Before the judge finalised the wording of the order, the counsel for News Group Newspapers, Guy Vassall Adams, said that McDonagh’s demand to hand over the mobile “presupposes that [News Group Newspapers] knows the whereabouts” of the phone.
Vos’s order, handed down in court, said: “The defendant shall, within 21 days of this order, provide a confidential witness statement, containing a statement of truth to the claimant’s solicitors, explaining what material has been delivered up and where it is originating from, and if no mobile phone, and, or, no other material is delivered up what inquiries have been made by the defendant and the outcome of those inquiries; any further information they may have as to whether that material was ever in their possession and as to the present whereabouts of that material.”
McDonagh launched proceedings against News Group Newspapers on 7 September, two months after a Sun journalist was arrested and bailed by officers working on Tuleta in relation to allegedly “handling stolen goods”.
They acted after the Met had been handed information by News International’s management and standards committee that showed “staff at News International titles appear to have been in possession of material downloaded or otherwise obtained from stolen mobile phones”.
