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Free speech 'put into bondage'
Amar Singh, Evening Standard24 Jul 2008
Leading media lawyers today described the ruling in the Max Mosley case as a "landmark" decision.
Mark Stephens of law firm Finers Stephens Innocent told the Standard that Mr Justice Eady's High Court judgment "puts free speech into bondage".
He said: "This caning of the News Of The World by Max Mosley will be rued by all investigative journalists - we will probably see a shift away from the 'I-made-my-excuses-and-left' type of reporting. There will be less titillation and more undercover drugs and crime stings ... This cannot be regarded as anything other than a landmark."
Mr Stephens added: "This effectively will put the sex lives of the rich and famous off limits."
But in his 54-page ruling, Mr Justice Eady insisted that there was nothing "landmark" about the decision. The judge said: "It is simply the application to rather unusual facts of recently developed but established principles."
His view was supported by Keith Mathieson, from Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, who said: "I don't think it is a landmark - it is an interesting judgment which adds to the body of privacy law.
"It is an increase on previous awards on privacy but there were quite a lot of specific factors. Time will tell how newspapers react, but it may not be precisely business as usual - there may be a short-term effect."
Niri Shan, head of media law at Taylor Wessing, added: "This confirms the media's worst fears as Mr Justice Eady has applied established principles that someone's sex life is inherently private and that you have to have a strong public interest justification to be able to publish information on that - even if they fulfil some sort of public role."
Ramona Mehta, media lawyer at Mishcon de Reya predicted newspaper editors would in future take greater care to assess whether there was a true public interest in stories based on private information.
She added: "It is very interesting that Mosley chose to fight a privacy case rather than a defamation one, considering-that the allegations were undoubtedlydefamatory of him. By choosing to bring a privacy claim, the case came before court relatively quickly, and Mosley avoided being tried by jury."
Many now expect Mr Mosley to pursue libel actions against other media outlets.
The case is the latest high-profile privacy hearing presided over by Mr Justice Eady. The 65-year-old has carved out a reputation as a champion of individual privacy over the freedom of the press.
He has overseen numerous hearings centred on privacy and libel issues involving public figures - including an action brought by the Beckhams against their former nanny.
He also granted a privacy order to Maxine Carr in the Soham murders case.
More recently, he presided over the cases which resulted in newspapers paying out thousands of pounds in compensation to Kate and Gerry McCann over newspaper reports about their daughter Madeleine's disappearance and to Robert Murat over coverage of his naming as a suspect in the investigation.
Two particular cases in which Mr Justice-Eady was involved are said to have been crucial in putting emphasis on the privacy of the individual over freedom of expression.
In 2005 he awarded £5,000 and granted an injunction to a singer, Loreena McKennitt, stopping a former friend from including personal material about her in a book, on the basis that she had violated a duty of confidence.
The following year, a man who conducted an adulterous relationship with another man's wife was granted an injunction stopping the betrayed husband from revealing all to the media.
