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

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.