EasterThe Hilary legal term ended on Wednesday 23 March 2016 and the Easter term does not begin until Tuesday 5 April 2016.  The High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court are on “vacation” over this period and Inforrm is taking a short Easter break.  We will resume with a weekly round up next Monday.

We will however, continue to have the occasional post over the next week – catching up with some “Case Comments” and with news items. As usual, we invite posts from readers on “Media and Law” topics. Contact us via the Inforrm email:inforrmeditorial@gmail.com. And please let us know by email if there are topics which you think we should be covering more (or less).

The Hilary Term has been a quiet one in English media law.  There has been only one full libel trial, Stocker v Stocker (the judge awarded £5,000 damages which the claimant turned down).  There was one “meaning hearing”, Hiranandani-Vandrevala v Times Newspapers Ltd ([2016] EWHC 250 (QB)).  There was only one statement in open court.

There was one privacy trial, Axon v Ministry of Defence, tried by Nicol J (judgment is awaited), one breach of confidence trial (Burrell v Clifford [2016] EWHC 294 (Ch)) and one privacy injunction (PJS  v News Group Newspapers).

The Supreme Court refused the media permission to appeal in two important media law cases: Mirror Phone Hacking and the Mail Children Paparazzi photographs case.  The former decision has an immediate impact on the continuing phone hacking litigation both against Mirror Group (2nd Wave) and against News Group (Third Tranche).

The top ten posts of the term were as follows (in descending order)