Judicial Appointment: Mr Justice Nicklin appointed Judge in Charge of the Media and Communications List

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.