On 17 January 2013 Mr Justice Briggs, sitting in the High Court Chancery Division, published his reasons in  RocknRoll v News Group Newspapers Ltd granting an interim injunction restraining News Group Newspaper from publishing photographs of Edward RocknRoll (the “claimant”).  See my post on the reportage here.

FACTS

In July 2010 the claimant attended a private fancy dress party to celebrate the 21st birthday of his then wife’s sister at her parent’s private estate [1].  Another guest at the party took photographs of the claimant (“the Photographs”), some of which showed him partly naked. The Photographs were posted on the photographer’s Facebook page where they could be viewed by his 1,500 “friends”, until subsequent changes to the Facebook settings resulted in them being made accessible to the general public (unbeknownst to the photographer).  Since the Photographs were taken the claimant divorced his first wife and married Kate Winslet, an actress [2].  The Photographs came to the attention of the defendant at the beginning of January 2013 [3] and it:

“..wishes to publish the Photographs, together with a description of their contents, in the Sun newspaper, and notified the claimant of its intention to do so, albeit not the source of the Photographs… it intended to pixillate the part of any published photographs which showed the lower half of the Claimant’s body.”

DECISION

At [5] his Honour set out the general principles applicable in considering an application for injunctive relief against misuse of private information in the Read the rest of this entry »