A case note about Paul Weller v Associated News [2014] EWHC 1163

In recent years there has been a steady stream of legal claims brought by high-profile celebrities seeking to guard their privacy rights (under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights) from press intrusion. The courts have developed a new action called misuse of private information to deal with these disputes. Misuse of private information (MPI) involves a 2-stage test. First, the court asks whether the claimant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in respect of the disputed information. If so, the court proceeds to a second stage ‘balancing exercise’ where the claimant’s Article 8 privacy right is balanced against the defendant’s Article 10 right to free expression.

This MPI action was brought by ‘mod-father’ Paul Weller on behalf of his three children, Dylan, John Paul and Bowie (note the rock legend theme in these names). He objected to paparazzi photographs taken of him and his children on the streets of Los Angeles. The photos were published by the Mail Online, but the faces of his children had not been pixelated despite special protections for children set out in the ‘Press Complaints Code’. This case raised a number of issues, but one is particularly interesting. This was whether ‘Mrs Weller’ (and the Weller children themselves) had already put personal information into the public domain, meaning that their privacy had already been compromised. Specifically, Mrs Weller had published various photographs of the children on Twitter, although their faces were not featured. The court found that the claimants still had a reasonable expectation of privacy despite these actions because their faces had not previously been published. The court also held that their Art 8 rights outweighed the Mail’s Article 10 right as the photos and accompanying story made no contribution to debate.