A 'well-known' man is seeking an injunction in the UK - what does that mean for other countries?

Media Law

London’s High Court will decide whether allegations against the man can be published at a trial due to be held later this month.

A “WELL-KNOWN individual” in the UK is currently seeking an injunction in the courts to prevent two news organisations from publishing serious allegations made against him. 

A hearing at London’s High Court last week was told that The Guardian and Independent Television News (ITN), which produces the daily news programmes for ITV, Channel 4 and 5, had carried out a journalistic investigation into allegations concerning the man’s conduct towards a number of people over a period of years. 

The man had denied all the allegations, which both organisations intend to publish. He was granted anonymity in the court proceedings. 

According to the Guardian, the man’s legal team told the court that he had attempted to take his own life on two occasions and that there was a serious risk that he could harm himself if the allegations are made public. 

They said publishing the claims would breach Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which relate to the right to life and prohibition of torture, respectively. 

The court will decide whether The Guardian and ITN will be prevented from publishing and broadcasting the allegations against the man at a trial due to be held later this month.

His identity has already been the subject of widespread online speculation.

An injunction is essentially a court order that either compels a person, business or organisation to do something, or prohibits them from doing something.

There is also such a thing as a super-injunction, which also prevents the reporting that the injunction exists at all, but that is not what is being sought in this case. 

Typically, the injunction only carries legal authority within the jurisdiction it is issued in. So does that mean the allegations against the person at the centre of such an injunction and their identity can be published abroad?

“The short answer is yes,” TJ McIntyre, associate professor at University College Dublin’s Sutherland School of Law, told The Journal. “Injunctions issued by the English courts, as a general rule, do not have effects outside of England and Wales.”

Past cases

There have been high-profile examples of the limits of injunctions in the past.

In April 2011, former Manchester United footballer Ryan Giggs obtained a super-injunction to prevent the tabloid the Sun and other outlets from publishing claims that he had an affair with model Imogen Thomas, who he claimed was trying to blackmail him. 

But because the super-injunction did not extend north of the border, Scottish newspaper the Sunday Herald published a full-page photo of Giggs on 22 May 2011 with a black bar across his eyes and the word ‘censored’ in it.

‘Everyone knows that this is the footballer accused of using the courts to keep allegations of a sexual affair secret. But we weren’t supposed to tell you that,’ the front page read. 

The following day, Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming named him in the House of Commons in May 2011 under parliamentary privilege during a question on privacy orders. 

Before these instances, Giggs’s name had already been tweeted thousands of times as being the footballer behind the injunction, while both his and Thomas’s names had been chanted by rival football fans at Manchester United games.

The footballer later accepted that there was no basis for accusing Thomas of blackmail and consented to being legally named in court in February 2012.

“The injunction was limited. It was an injunction of an English court, and it didn’t apply in Scotland, or for that matter, it wouldn’t apply in Northern Ireland, never mind in the Republic,” McIntyre said. 

He said that while the English courts have no power to control what Irish people say in Ireland, an injunction can be obtained from an English court to prevent somebody who is subject to that jurisdiction from doing something abroad.

“There could be an injunction issued against an individual English company, which would prevent it from doing something with its assets abroad, for example,” he said.

“But in general, no. This kind of injunction in the privacy defamation context generally only applies in the jurisdiction where it’s granted.”

He also said that an international newspaper which publishes an edition in England, or a website which targets the English market could be in breach of an injunction if they were to name an individual, adding that it comes down to whether they have assets there against whom enforcement action can be taken.

“If not, then it doesn’t matter whether or not the website is accessible in England, because the English courts have no effective power in respect to that website.”

The risks

Michael Kealey, a media lawyer, agreed that if you’re in one legal jurisdiction, it’s often very difficult for that jurisdiction to say that a granted injunction covers the entire world “because, generally speaking, one court can’t tell another court what to do”.

However, he told The Journal that while the order would not have direct force in the Republic of Ireland, “it would be very difficult for a Republic of Ireland media organisation to publish the allegations or indeed the name of the person in question”.

He said there are a number of practical reasons why such an injunction would be effective, particularly in Ireland. 

“Most Irish media will have a form of circulation within the United Kingdom,” he said, while Irish news websites can also be accessed in the UK. 

According to Kealey, in cases such as this, the fact of the injunction would typically be made known to other news organisations beyond, in this instance, the two outlets that the injunction is being sought against. 

“If you’ve got a circulation in the UK, if you’ve got assets in the UK, you’re going to be covered by that,” he said.

He also pointed to the fact that media organisations in Ireland who are part of a UK media organisation would also be covered because their parent companies are in London.

Kealey also emphasised that if a media organisation believes they know the identity of the man in this case and decide to publish it, they could find themselves being taken to court.

This is because the allegations at the centre of this case have not been made public and any news organisation outside of England would not be party to what they are. 

“You don’t know the validity or otherwise of the allegations because you haven’t been investigating how strong the evidence is. You simply wouldn’t know that,” he said.

If the allegations are subsequently proven to be untrue, the man “would be able to sue you on the basis that you implied, at the very least, that he was reasonably suspected of being guilty of the allegations that are made against him”, Kealey added.