Phone hacking

Kelly Hoppen (Sienna Miller’s stepmother) took her case against News of the World to the High Court today. Her legal team will be permitted to search journalist Dan Evans’ computers.

• PA Media Point>> Accident defence on 2009 phone-hack claim ‘nonsense’
• Press Gazette>>’100 new phone-hack victims to come out’

Press regulation

Anyone who would like to know a bit more detail about Sarah Baskerville’s complaint against the Daily Mail and the Independent on Sunday should take a look at her latest blog post, an emotional response following a ruling in the newspapers’ favour, explaining how she felt constrained by the PCC’s structure. It’s useful material for anyone researching, or making sense of, the culture of social networks and online activity and the associated ethical / legal problems.

Defamation

A very readable piece on Inforrm takes up that surprisingly neglected question of liability. As Mr Justice Eady said:

“It is surprising how little authority there is within this jurisdiction applying the common law of publication or its modern statutory refinements to internet communications”.

Dr David Rolph’s piece is about Australian libel, but globally relevant.

• Inforrm>>Case Law: Thornton v Telegraph Media Group – no defence of ‘honest comment’ in malicious falsehood – Sara Mansoori
• Grey Cardigan: Legal threats around over hosepipe ban story

Injunctions

• What happens when the letters run out, asks Rod Dadak

• Little or no mention of this decision in the press, perhaps because of this stipulation: “There is an Order restraining publication of information concerning this case, other than the information contained in this judgment and in the Order of the Court made in this action“.

Privacy

• PogoWasRight: Google Wants Case About Leaked Name Dismissed [US]

Misc

• Inforrm>>Freedom of Expression: Banned preacher speaks by videolink – Adam Wagner
• Sam McIntosh (CLJJ)>> Public funding for the representation of next of kin at inquests and open justice

Events

I’ve finally got round to creating an events page: https://meejalaw.com/events/. More things will be added.

Tips & tools

Ever reach the end of the day and realise you’ve completely forgotten your to-do list? Try Remember the Milk, a task management system that sits in your inbox, glaring at you when you get distracted from your duties. (HT to Emily Butselaar at Index on Censorship for that one).

You can find a full stream of aggregated media law news via @medialawUK on Twitter; and Meeja Law tweets go out via @meejalaw. Contact me via @jtownend or jt.townend [at] gmail.com.

The press summary issued by the court [PDF link] explains that the Supreme Court has unanimously allowed an appeal in the Spiller and another (Appellants) v Joseph and others (Respondents) [2010] UKSC 53 case, on appeal from the Court of Appeal [2009] EWCA Civ [1075].

• Judgment on Bailli at this link

The case involves a Motown music group called the The Gillettes or Saturday Night at the Movies, whose members sued their former agent Jason Spiller, after a notice was pasted on his entertainment company’s website.

The original defences used by the defendants (the appellants in the Supreme Court case), of justification and fair comment, were struck out in the High Court. In the subsequent Court of Appeal hearing, the defence of justification was reinstated, but the fair comment striking out was upheld.

However, the Supreme Court today allowed the appeal and said that the defence of fair comment should be open to the appellants, Spiller and another.

The judges decided that the “comment must explicitly or implicitly indicate, at least in general terms, the facts on which it is based.”

In their summary of the judgment, the judges acknowledged the digital age: “Today many people take advantage of the internet to make public comments and the [fair comment] defence would be robbed of much of its efficacy if readers had to be given detailed information to enable evaluation of the comment (…)

“The Supreme Court agreed that there was a case for reform of a number of aspects of the defence of fair comment which did not arise directly in this case (…)

“The whole area merited consideration by the Law Commission or an expert committee,” the ruling said.

The judges explained that the defence had been renamed from ‘fair comment’ to ‘honest comment’.