It has been announced that Mr Justice Nicklin has been appointed Judge in Charge of the Media and Communications List as from 3 February 2021 when Mr Justice Warby takes up his position in the Court of Appeal.
Mr Justice Nicklin was appointed to the High Court on 2 October 2017 and has been a judge of the Media and Communications List ever since.
He has given a number of important judgments in media cases over the last three years, including
- Canada Goose UK Retail Ltd v Persons unknown [2020] 1 WLR 417.
- Koutsogiannis v The Random House Group Ltd [2020] 4 WLR 25.
- Monir v Wood [2018] EWHC 3525 (QB).
- Bokova v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2019] QB 861
- Taveta Investments Ltd v Financial Reporting Council [2018] EWHC 1662 (Admin)
- Dhir v Saddler [2018] 4 WLR 1.
- Brown v Bower and another [2017] 4 WLR 197.
The Media and Communications List was established as from 1 March 2017 and Mr Justice Warby was appointed as the judge in charge. As from 1 October 2019 it became a specialist list and a new CPR 53, Practice Directions and a Pre-Action Protocol were issued.
Since the Media and Communications List was first established a total of 761 cases have been issued in the list. Of these 380 (50%) were classified as “Defamation – libel and slander” and only 64 (8%) as “Misuse of Private Information” or “Breach of Privacy”. A total of 138 (19%) were classified as “Data Protection”. However, in 2020 the proportion of data protection cases substantially increased – with 33% of the total being “Data Protection” (see the Inforrm analysis here). It seems likely that the proportion of data protection cases will continue to increase.
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