Now that the legal term has ended, Inforrm is taking a winter break for a few weeks. We will have a some occasional posts over the next fortnight but the full normal service will be resumed until 11 January 2021.

This Week’s Round Up

Last Week in the Courts

On 14 and 15 December 2020 Jay J heard the trial in the case of Soriano v Forensic News LLC.

On 16 December 2020 the Administrative Court (Bean LJ and Warby J) handed down judgment in the case of Scottow v Crown Prosecution Service [2020] EWHC 3421 (Admin).  The appeal against a conviction under section 127(2)(c) of the Communications Act 2003 was allowed.  The Daily Mail had a piece about the decision “Victory in the war on woke: Judges’ landmark ruling in case of mother who called trans woman ‘he’ on Twitter means freedom of speech DOES includes the ‘right to offend'”.

On the same day the Court of Appeal (McCombe, Peter Jackson and Dingemans LJJ) heard the appeal in the case of Tinkler v Ferguson. Judgment was reserved.

On 17 December 2020, Nicklin J held Case Management Conferences in 16 injunction cases brought by local authorities.

On 18 December 2020 Collins-Rice J gave judgment in the case of Shah v Up And Coming TV Ltd & Ors [2020] EWHC 3472 (QB).  The Judge held that the words complained of were not defamatory.

On the same day there was a statement in open court in the case of HRH Duchess of Sussex v Splash News read before Nicklin J.

Nicklin J also heard an application in Ward v Associated Newspapers.

Next Week in the Courts

Monday 21 December 2020 is the last day of the Michaelmas legal term.  A number of reserved judgments will be handed down by Media and Communications judges:

  • Sicri v Associated Newspapers, Warby J
  • Bukhari v Bukhari, Julian Knowles J
  • Day v Chivers, Collins-Rice J

Other Jurisdictions

Israel:  “Israeli police  require internet and cellphone providers to give them access to the online data of any website or anyone in Israel, as documents obtained by the newspaper ‘Haaretz’ and confirmed by sources with knowledge of the technology and its inner workings.”

Research and Resources

Judgments

The following reserved judgments after public hearing in media law cases are outstanding:

Onwude v Dyer, heard 6-8 October 2020 (HHJ Parkes QC)

Wright v Granath, heard 15 October 2020 (Moylan, Singh and Popplewell LJJ)

B.C.Strategy UK Ltd v Keshet Broadcasting Ltd heard 17 November 2020  (Saini J).

Riley v Sivier, heard 11 December 2020 (Collins-Rice J).

Soriano v Forensic News LLC, heard 14 and 15 December 2020 (Jay J).

Tinkler v Ferguson, heard 16 December 2020 (McCombe, Peter Jackson and Dingemans LJJ).

Please let us know if there are other reserved judgments which we should be listing.

Inforrm: Round up of the Year

This year we have had 364 posts on Inforrm on a very wide variety of media and legal topics from authors from all areas of media law and all round the world.  We have had 450,000 page views this year, more than half from the UK with the United States, India, Australia and the Philippines making up the rest of the top five.

Many thanks to all our readers for following the blog and our twitter feed.  And thank you for the many positive comments we have had (and the constructive negative ones).  Thanks also to everyone who has written for the blog.

As we have said many times before, Inforrm is intended to be a forum for debate and we welcome contributions from all points of view about issues concerning “media and law”.  We can be contacted via the email address on the home page.

The top 10 posts in 2020 were as follows (in descending order):