There are two hearings of interest to readers of this blog at the Royal Courts of Justice today. First, in Court 76, there is a preliminary hearing of the Leveson Inquiry. Tweeting from the Inquiry has been permitted and it is possible to follow either @Press_Inquiry (from Full Fact) or @hackinginquiry (from Hacked Off).
Points from today’s hearing include:
- The Inquiry hearings proper are likely to start in the second week of November and then “not stop”. Counsel for the Inquiry said he could foresee it going on for “three or four years”
- The victims are likely to be the first to give evidence.
- Witnesses will be given advance notice of topic areas arising from their statements on which they will be questioned.
- All the recipients of requests for evidence under section 21 have engaged with the inquiry.
- Trinity Mirror wants access to the “inner workings” of the Inquiry, without being a core participant. This application was refused
[Update] There is a fuller report of the hearing on the Press Inquiry site.
Secondly, at 2.00pm in Court 14, the privacy trial in Trimingham v Associated Newspapers began before Mr Justice Tugendhat. Ms Trimingham is represented by William Bennett (instructed by Mishcon de Reya) and Associated Newspapers by Antony White QC and Alexandra Marzec (instructed by RPC). This is only the fourth privacy trial in a case against the media – following Campbell, Mosley and Ferdinand. This hearing continues tomorrow.
Finally, we have previously posted about an application on by Associated Newspapers on Wednesday 28 September 2011. The Inquiry has now posted the following documents relating to this hearing:
- 28 September Hearing transcript (MS Word 189kb)
- Letter from RPC Solicitors sent on behalf of Associated Newspapers (PDF 587kb)
- Submission on behalf of Associated Newspapers (PDF 1.66mb)
Just for the record…I flew in from Boston to attend the second preliminary hearing of the Leveson Inquiry to hopefully ask and be granted Core Participant status. I am grateful to the amiable Lord Justice Leveson for giving me the opportunity to make my submissions, though he regrettably denied me. I am considering seeking an appeal via Judicial Review, though I know nothing about this.
I did forget to put forth the following submission. Nearly all of the victims are phone hacking victims who know or allege that News International hacked their voicemails. As I understand it, at the moment there are very few victims alleging misbehaviour by the other media Core Participants. So, why are they Core Participants when there are no or few complaints made against them by the victim Core Participants? Just wondering…
Overall, I found the hearing extremely informative and Lord Justice Leveson has a good handle on the enormous task ahead of him. I’d say it was worth the jet lag.