A man who obtained an injunction banning The Sun from publishing an article about his private life can remain anonymous, High Court judge Mrs Justice Sharp has ruled.
The newspaper was also barred from continuing to publish an article in which it reported that the man had persuaded a judge to gag it over fears that the individual, referred to as MNB, would eventually be identified.
The man initially obtained the injunction from Mr Justice Henriques on March 1 by telephone after he was told that The Sun intended to publish a story about his sexual relationship with another person.
The hearing then took place three days later and The Sun’s publishers agreed the injunction should continue until trial or further order.
The newspaper had also published a story the day before and on its website, which, Mrs Justice Sharp said, “referred to the fact that an individual with a particular occupation had ‘gagged The Sun’.”
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The man’s lawyers argued that this article had led to others in other newspapers and maintained that its contents breached the original order made by Mr Justice Henriques, amounting to a contempt. News Group Newspapers, The Sun’s publisher which is a subsidiary of News International, owner of The Times, denied the claim.
Mrs Justice Sharp said an order such as that made by Mr Justice Henriques could be made when the court determined that a claimant was entitled to an interim injunction in a case concerning private information. The obvious purpose of such orders, she said, was the protection on the one hand of the ability of the press to report the proceedings, and on the other, of the article 8 rights of the claimant (privacy).
They were also aimed in particular at preventing the risk of “jigsaw identification” if he or she was anonymised.
That “jigsaw identification”, which happens when a person’s identity is exposed through the piecing together of different facts reported in different newspapers, could defeat the purpose of any temporary injunction and of the main action for a permanent injunction itself, she said.
Mrs Justice Sharp said she was making no finding of contempt, and was not exercising the court’s jurisdiction to restrain an anticipated contempt.