The Hilary Legal Term in England and Wales began last week, on Monday 13 January 2020.  It will end on Wednesday 8 April 2020. This post deals with the media law cases listed for this term and cases in which decisions are awaited.

Please let us know if there are any other media law cases which should be added to this post.

On 17 and 18 March 2020 the Supreme Court (Lords Reed, Wilson and Briggs, Lady Arden and Lord Kitchin) will hear the appeal in the case of Serafin v Malkiewicz & Ors. The issues are:  (1) the breadth of the public interest defence; (2) whether the Court of Appeal was entitled to interfere with the Judge’s factual findings and (3) whether rudeness or “descending into the arena” by the judge can be sufficient to render the trial unfair. We had a post about the Court of Appeal decision.

On 3 or 4 March 2020 the Court of Appeal will hear the appeal in the case of ZXC v Bloomberg.  We had a case comment  on the first instance decision.

The following trials and applications are listed for this term:

On 5 February 2020 there will be a trial in the case of Sube & anr v News Group Newspapers Ltd & anr, listed for 3 days.

On 3 March 2020 there will be a trial in the case of JQL v NTP, listed for 4 days

On 9 March 2020 there will be a trial in the case of Reid v Price,  listed for 7 days.  An interim order was granted on 18 May 2018.  The judgment is available on Lawtel [£]

On 16 March 2020, there will  be a trial in the privacy case of JKL v VBN, listed for 5 days.  An interim judgment of Morris J in this case is available at [2019] EWHC 2227 (QB)

On  16 March 2020 there will be a data protection trial in the case of Aven & ors v Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, listed for 4 days

On 23 March 2020 there will  be a trial in the case of Rayner v Seabourne-Hawkins, listed for 2 days.  The claim form is available on Lawtel [£]

On 23 March 2020 there will be a trial in the case of Depp v News Group Newspapers Ltd & anr  listed for 10 days.  The claim form is available on Lawtel [£]

During the last legal term the Court of Appeal granted permission in the case of Wright v Ver (due for hearing on 5 or 6 May 2020) and refused it in the cases of Bull v Desporte and Caine v Advertiser and Times Ltd.

On 15 January 2020 the Court of Appeal refused permission to appel in the case of Al Sadik v Sadik.

The application for permission to appeal in the case of Lloyd v Google LLC is pending before the Supreme Court and is expected to be determined this term.

Inforrm would like to thank Benjamin Pell for his assistance in compiling this preview.