The Ministry of Justice has published the privacy injunction statistics for 2018.  These record a total of 5 new interim privacy injunction applications. Of these 3 were granted, one was refused and one was withdrawn. The statistics are to be found in Section 7 of the Civil Justice Quarterly for October to December 2018 [pdf], published earlier this month.

The figure of 5 applications is a substantial reduction from 2017 when there were 14 applications for interim privacy injunctions, 11 of which resulted in injunctions being granted or, in one case, an undertaking being given and 3 which were refused.

Three of the applications were made without notice which suggests that they are likely to have been “blackmail” cases, not involving the media (as, under the modern practice, media privacy injunctions are invariably on notice). Only one of the 5 was granted at a private hearing, with 2 being anonymised.  One of the successful injunctions was a “super injunction”.

The general details of these applications (and all applications at the High Court in London for new interim privacy injunction proceedings since August 2011) can be found in Table 3.1 of  the Tables accompanying the Civil Justice Quarterly [xlsx].

In addition to the 5 privacy injunction applications there were 4 hearings in 2018 concerning the continuation or variation of an existing injunction. Full details of these (and all continuation and variation proceedings since August 2011) can be found in Table 3.2 [xlsx].

In addition, three final privacy injunctions were dealt with by the High Court in 2018, 2 of which were granted and one of which was refused. Full details of these (and all final injunction proceedings since August 2011) can be found in Table 3.3 [xlsx].

However, once again, the statistics do not appear to be complete. We have identified 4 cases in which there are public judgments in cases in which applications for interim privacy injunctions were made in 2018

In addition there are 2 further cases in the public domain in which injunctions have been granted in which there do not appear to be public judgments

We are aware of at least one further privacy injunction case which is not the subject of a public judgment or a news report.  Please let us know if there are any further privacy injunction applications which appear to have been omitted from the statistics.

The number of recorded privacy injunction proceedings by type of proceeding for the period 2011 to 2018 are summarised in the table below