News: Privacy Injunction Statistics, January to June 2012 – identifying the cases [Updated]

On 27 September 2012 the Ministry of Justice Published its second statistical report on privacy injunctions, covering the 6 month period January to June 2012. It is noted that, during this period, there were 9 new applications for interim privacy injunctions and 9 applications to continue existing injunctions.  There were 4 cases in which the High Court considered whether or not to issue permanent privacy injunctions and no privacy injunction appeals. Two of the cases involved the media although there appears to have been only one classic “media privacy injunction” application (which was unsuccessful on the return date).

The report notes that the statistics cover injunction prohibiting the publication of private or confidential information.  It is not clear whether and to what extent “commercial confidentiality” cases are covered (as opposed to cases dealing purely with the misuse of private information).

The first report in this series was issued on 15 March 2012 and covered the 5 month period August to December 2011.  During that period there were 4 new privacy injunctions applications, 3 hearings for the continuation or variation of interim injunctions, one application for a permanent injunction and one appeal.  We had a post about the earlier report in March 2012.

Some more detail as to the injunction applications dealt with in the second report can be found in the attached Tables (which also contain the figures from the first report for comparison purposes).

Table 1 tells us that of the 9 applications for new injunctions, four were brought by a male applicants one by a female applicant, two by companies or other organisations and two by more than one claimant. Three of the applications were on notice and six without notice.  All applications made were successful – one by consent.  None of the injunctions contained “super-injunction” provisions.  Six of the nine hearings were in private, and anonymity was granted in only three cases.  In two cases there were no derogations from open justices.

Although public judgments are now given in privacy cases, the Report does not identify the cases to which reference is made.  We have identified the following 8 interim applications

[Update]  We were, originally, missing one case which, with the assistance of a reader, we have now identified – BUQ vHRA.

The case of Spelman was a classic “media privacy injunction” – it was granted on the first application but discharged after the continuation hearing.  The AM case did involve the media but primarily concerned harassment.

The continuation applications are dealt with in Table 2.  All but one related to injunctions granted in the same period, all but two resulted in the injunctions being continued.  There were four private hearings (out of nine) and anonymity in two cases.

These cases are somewhat harder to identify as the numbers don’t quite add up. We have identified continuation hearings in the cases of Contostavlos v Mendahun ([2012] EWHC 850 (QB)) (injunction continued), BUQ v HRE ([2012] EWHC 774 (QB)) (injunction varied) and Spelman v Express Newspapers ([2012] EWHC 239 (QB))(injunction discharged).  The other hearings are not easy to identify – although the Ministry Statistics may include some hearings where judgment was handed down after an interim hearing (Gold, IPCC and AM).  We would be grateful if our readers were able to assist on this point.

The applications for permanent injunctions are dealt with in Table 3. Of the 4 applications, three were made by females and one by more than one claimant.  Injunctions were granted in three out of the four cases.   Again these are harder to identify.  One of these  cases is, presumably, the long running WXY v Gewanter litigation – where a final injunction was granted on 13 June 2012 ([2012] EWHC1601 (QB)).  Again, we would welcome assistance as to the other “permanent injunctions” mentioned.

The Ministry of Justice report notes that, following the successful implementation of the pilot scheme the provisions will be made permanent by inclusion in the Civil Procedure Rules with effect from 1 October 2012.

We repeat the point made in our earlier post that it would be extremely helpful if the cases where there are public judgments were identified in the report.