The Hilary legal term ended on Wednesday 31 March 2021 and the Easter term does not begin until Tuesday 13 April 2021.  The High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court are on “vacation” over this period and Inforrm is taking a short Easter break.  We will resume with a weekly round up on 12 April 2021.

We will however, continue to have the occasional post over the next week – catching up with some “Case Comments” and with news items. As usual, we invite posts from readers on “Media and Law” topics. Contact us via the Inforrm email:inforrmeditorial@gmail.com. And please let us know by email if there are topics which you think we should be covering more (or less).

The Hilary Term saw a two high profile judgments in the high profile case brought by the Duchess of Sussex against Associated Newspapers – the granting of summary judgment ([2021] 4 WLR 35) and an order for the publication of a front page statement by the Mail  on Sunday announcing its defeat ([2021] EWHC 510 (Ch)).  Last year’s highest profile libel case , Depp v News Group Newspaper,s came to an end with the refusal of permission to appeal by the Court of Appeal ([2021] EWCA Civ 423).

Our Table of Media Law cases has 25 judgments for Hilary Term, only two of which were given by the Court of Appeal (Wright v Granath and Tinkler v Ferguson) and none  by the Supreme Court.

There were 140 new cases issued in the Media and Communications List last term.  As indication of a growing trend, more than half  of these (71) were data protection claims and only 45 were defamation claims

Our top 10 new posts this term were as follows (in descending order):

The top 10 countries for Inforrm viewing this term were, in descending order:

  • United Kingdom
  • United States
  • India
  • Australia
  • Philippines
  • Ireland
  • Malaysia
  • Canada
  • Netherlands
  • France