Judge extends celebrities' legal right to anonymity

The banker Sir Fred Goodwin had his super-injunction exposed (Reuters)

Celebrities who took out "super-injunctions" to prevent the media revealing details of their private lives were granted a further period of anonymity yesterday.

Mr Justice Tugendhat, sitting at the High Court in London, considered a series of injunctions taken out by individuals against Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers between November 2010 and May 2011. Although the judge discharged the injunctions, he kept in place anonymity orders preventing the identification of the claimants who brought them. "It is necessary for the anonymity orders to remain in force," he said.

One of the cases he considered concerned the former Royal Bank of Scotland boss, Sir Fred Goodwin, who was exposed by Lord Stoneham. In May last year, the peer used parliamentary privilege to reveal details of Sir Fred's injunction. Lord Justice Tugendhat ruled that an anonymity order should remain active to protect another party in the matter from being identified.