PNM v Times Newspapers Ltd And Ors
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE VOS
Areas of Law
- Human Rights Law
- Tort Law
- Evidence Law
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
On 22 October 2013, Judge Tugendhat refused an interim non-disclosure order sought by the appellant, PNM, who argued it was necessary to protect his Article 8 rights after his arrest related to serious sexual offenses against children was publicly referred to in a criminal trial. The court held that PNM was unlikely to succeed at trial because the public interest in the open justice principle and the Article 10 rights of freedom of expression outweighed the appellant's Article 8 privacy rights.
Judgment
Lady Justice Sharp :
Introduction
On 22 October 2013 Tugendhat J refused an application for an interim non disclosure order (a privacy injunction) by the appellant, described in these proceedings as PNM. He is an individual living in the Oxfordshire area. The application was made on 15 October 2013 against the publishers of The Times (TNL) and one of its senior journalists, Andrew Norfolk, and against the publishers of a local newspaper, the Oxford Mail, and one of its journalists, Ben Wilkinson.
The non-disclosure order sought to prevent the disclosure of a number of categories of information. Essentially, however, the appellant wanted to prevent publication of the fact of his arrest on 22 March 2012 on suspicion of committing serious sexual offences against children and associated information, which would lead to his identification as the person so arrested (‘the information’) because of his fear of the damage that such publications may cause to him and members of his family, including his children.
The information had been referred to on a number of occasions in open court in earlier criminal proceedings to which the appellant was not a party, but publication of it had been temporarily postponed by orders made at the appellant’s request under section 4(2) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981. The application for a privacy injunction was made in the expectation that those orders would be lifted. Section 4(2) provides: “In any [legal] proceedings the court may, where it appears to be necessary for avoiding a substantial risk of prejudice to the administration of justice in those proceedings, or in any other proceedings, pending or imminent, order that the publication of any report of the proceedings, or any part of the proceedings, be postponed for such period as the court thinks necessary for that purpose.
Factual background
I can summarise the background which led to the application, because the relevant material has been comprehensively dealt with in the judgment below, albeit the judge omitted some of the detail so that his judgment could be a public one whatever the ultimate outcome, in accordance with the guidance given in JIH v News Group Newspapers Limited [2011] EWCA Civ 42 , at paragraph 21 (9).
The appellant was one of a number of men arrested in March 2012 in connection with ‘Operation Bullfinch’ a Thames Valley Police investigation into allegations of child sex grooming/prostitution in the Oxford area. After his arrest the a