The Ministry of Justice has produced its statistical bulletin [pdf] for privacy injunctions, July to December 2013. This shows that there was one application for new privacy injunction in this period – which was refused. This is the lowest figure since the statistics were first published for the period August to December 2011.
There were no hearings of appeals relating to privacy injunctions.
All the Ministry of Justice says about the injunction application in question is that it was “sought by a male” and was “on notice”. The application was in the case of PNM v Times Newspapers ([2013] EWHC 3177 (QB)) and was brought by an individual who was arrested, but not charged for serious sexual offences. There is a 5RB case note about this decision. An appeal to the Court of Appeal is pending.
The Ministry of Justice noted one, unsuccessful application to continue a privacy injunction during the same period.
When the last set of statistics were released (for January to June 2013) we had a post by Nick Wilcox entitled “The Last Gasp of the Super-Injunction“. Noting that there were 6 successful privacy injunction applications in that period (and no “super-injunctions”) he noted that, although “super-injunctions” were an almost extinct species, ‘non-super’ privacy injunctions remained alive and kicking In the light of the statistics for the last 6 months, that conclusion is now in some doubt.
The last successful privacy injunction against the media appears to be that in Rocknroll v News Group Newspapers Ltd ([2013] EWHC 24 (Ch)) in January 2013 and the last “non-media” privacy injunction that in the case of AVB v TDD ([2013] EWHC 1705 (QB)) on 20 June 2013.
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