Celebrity injunction: Sun on Sunday’s appeal against gagging order to be heard on Friday
Editor of political blog says he has been threatened with prosecution for breaking the injunction
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The Sun on Sunday will challenge a privacy injunction which prevents the press from publishing details of the celebrity couple at the centre of a privacy order in court this Friday.
Three lawyers will hear an application by News Group Newspapers lawyers for the injunction to be overturned In the court of appeal in London.
The Court of Appeal granted an injunction preventing the press from printing details about a “three-way sexual encounter” involving a high-profile individual.
The celebrity, who is referred to by the initials PJS and described as a “well-known” public figure, claimed that his right to “private and family life” overrode the media’s right to publish an article about his affair or open relationship with his partner.
The injunction only applies to media organisations in England Wales. Most recently, newspapers in Canada and Sweden have named and published details of the celebrity couple.
A political blogger has also named the couple, claiming he was entitled to publish the story because the article was published in the Republic of Ireland and uploaded on American servers.
The editor of the blog has reportedly been contacted by Carter Ruck, a legal firm which represents the couple, threatening them with a possible fine and imprisonment under the Contempt of Court Act.
The blogger has said they do not believe they will be prosecuted because the media outlet is not physically based in the UK.
“Now I am fielding calls from European tabloids,” he told The Guardian. “I told [Carter-Ruck] to take it where the sun doesn’t shine. There’s no bricks and mortar in the UK, there’s no printing press in the UK, there’s no server in the UK.”
A Scottish paper, which cannot be named for legal reasons, also published details about the extra-marital sexual encounter on Sunday. The names of the couple have been widely disseminated across social media and printed in an American magazine.
The Sun on Sunday, the tabloid which initially tried to publish the story before being faced with an injunction at the beginning of the year, has announced it will challenge the ruling in court.
This is the first injunction to reach the Court of Appeal for five years and is predicted to prompt the most recent wave of legal disputes between celebrities and the press over privacy injunctions.
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