Superinjunctions
What’s the going rate for a kiss-and-tell story? How does it compare with the cost of a superinjunction. i.e. would it be cheaper to pay off the women currently going to the press with stories about footballers and actors? One wonders how many public figures have already adopted this approach.
Obviously it’d only work for rich people.
Legally protecting newspapers’ ability to publish kiss-and-tell stories doesn’t seem especially worthwhile; the supposed public interest justification is ridiculous, confusing the term with “what the public are interested in.” It’s quite obvious that in such cases the real motivation was circulation.
Nor, of course, does protecting the ability of the rich to maintain a profitable but inaccurate public reputation seem like a good use of the law. I do have more sympathy for their families who would presumably quite like to stay out of the press (and there are plenty of press abuses of privacy which could well do with being stamped out).
Not all SIJs exclusively cover kiss-and-tell stories. One from December 2008 started with stolen emails (Goldsmith & Anor v BCD, see para 27) - whatever their content, that feels much more reasonable than prohibiting someone from relating their own personal experiences, no matter how sordid. Another apparently includes an example of someone possibly causing their ex-mistress to lose their job, which may have a more credible public interest justification in favour of publication.
There’s a lot to be said for the view that the Internet makes superinjunctions somwhat pointless. The claims published recently on Twitter are of course unsourced and unverifiable gossip, but:
- Newspapers are studiously avoiding repeating all but one of them. Indeed it’s obvious that the false claim was included just to give them some convenient search terms they could mention. The loud denial it provoked may have been merely icing on the cake l-)
- The Telegraph reports that “lawyers representing two of the celebrities said they did not intend to try to sue the anonymous Twitter user who broke the terms of the orders, admitting that the individual would be difficult to trace.” If the rumours were inaccurate, or for that matter if they had any sense, they’d have just shrugged their shoulders and said “nothing to do with us.”
- …and one of them is suing. Exactly the same argument applies.