'Well-known' entertainer blocks story about extramarital 'three-way' affair
The privacy court injunction has made a return
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Your support makes all the difference.A “well-known" entertainer has prevented The Sun on Sunday from printing details about his extra-marital sexual encounter.
The individual is referred to by the initials PJS and his wife is referred to as YMA in the case. Both are described as public figures.
Judges ruled PJS’s right to “private and family life” overrides The Sun on Sunday’s right to publish an article about his infidelity, under laws on freedom of expression.
This is the first injunction to reach the Court of Appeal for five years and is predicted to prompt the latest series of legal disputes between celebrities and the press over privacy injunctions.
The entertainer is reported to have had a “three-way sexual encounter” with another couple over four years ago.
“In 2007 or 2008 the claimant met AB. There is a conflict of evidence as to whether they met through a mutual friend or on Facebook. The claimant and AB had occasional sexual encounters starting in 2009,” Lord Justice Jackson explained in the appeal court judgment.
“AB already had a partner, CD. In a text message exchange on 15 December 2011, the claimant asked if CD was ‘up for a three-way’. AB said that CD was. Accordingly, the three met for a three-way sexual encounter which they duly carried out. After that encounter, the sexual relationship between the claimant and AB came to an end, but they remained friends.”
The "committed couple" approached Steve Kennedy, the editor of The Sun on Sunday newspaper, just a few months ago in January and told him about their relationship with the prominent figure.
The newspaper, which had been planning on publishing the story, got in touch with the entertainer’s lawyers who claimed the story would be an invasion of privacy, in turn prompting a courtroom dispute.
In the end, the court of appeal ruled the newspaper could not publish the story because the entertainer, who has an “open relationship” with his wife, had an expectation that his sexual activities would remain private.
The judge also took into account the effect the likely to ensue “media storm” would have on the young children of the couple. In their words, “The children would become the subject of increased press attention, with all that that entails”.