The death of the super injunction and a triumph of common sense

This blog is so pleased with Mr Justice Tugendhat who yesterday stemmed the tide of creeping unofficial privacy law in our courts by ruling there were no grounds for a gagging order that preventing the disclosure of John Terry's affair with a former team-mate’s girlfriend.

Earlier in the week,a so called super injunction had prevented the press from reporting anything of the case,although as is always the situation now there were rumours flying around of the individuals concerned.

Now the England Captain gets his comeuppance with his picture plastered all over the front pages and no doubt his England captaincy under scrutiny.

The ruling comes after a succession of wealthy and powerful figures have used the Human Rights Act to prevent the publication of damaging allegations on the basis that it breached their right to privacy.

As Ian Burrell writes in the Independent,

In rushing to the courts to gag the News of the World from publishing allegations of his extra-marital affair with the ex-girlfriend of former team-mate Wayne Bridge, Terry has inadvertently gifted a victory to media organisations fighting the growing tendency of the rich and powerful to hide behind super-injunctions.

However this ruling puts the public interest firmly to the fore with the judge saying that Terry’s motivation in trying to prevent publication was not “personal distress” but the impact of adverse publicity on his earning power.