Lawyers increasingly used by private sector organisations in civil actions
Privacy arguments are no longer the preserve of celebrities and are being used in new and unexpected areas of law.
The public sector, in particular, faces increasing numbers of privacy-based legal challenges.
The traditional legal battle between famous individuals and the media made up only two out of 28 reported privacy cases in the year leading up to 31 May 2009, according to research by Sweet & Maxwell.
This is partly because privacy arguments are increasingly being used against the media to prevent publication without a full court hearing.
Jaron Lewis, media partner at Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP, says: “Public figures are making more use of interim injunctions to stop stories not on the basis that the reporting is inaccurate but purely on the basis that the reporting infringes their privacy.
“These emergency injunctions can be imposed on the media at short notice, perhaps late at night or over the weekend, often by phone to a judge. The problem is that the court system doesn’t properly track these emergency injunctions so it is hard to quantify the problem.”
Lawyers are also more likely to raise privacy issues in civil cases brought against public sector organisations.
One recent high-profile example is the case of Purdy v DPP in which Debbie Purdy successfully argued that the lack of clarity on assisted suicide was a violation of her right to lead a private life.
Recent challenges to public sector organisations include: a man who claimed that a ban (for safety reasons) on him having an open-air funeral pyre when he died would be an invasion into his rights to a private life; and a single mother who claimed that the Child Support Agency was so inefficient in enforcing payment from the estranged father that the right of her and her children to lead a private life was breached.
Jonathan Cooper, of Doughty Street Chambers, says: “The wider use of privacy arguments in the UK courts is really the UK playing catch up with other countries where the concept of privacy has been taken more seriously.” He adds that the absence of privacy rights has been a defect of UK law.
