Lawyers acting for The Sun newspaper have failed to have a ban lifted on the naming of a person believed to be at the centre of a court order preventing his identity being revealed – despite the Sunday Herald having yesterday essentially unmasked him.
Taking advantage of the court order not being applicable in Scotland, the Sunday Herald revealed the person suspected to be behind the 'super injunction', on the grounds that his identity was already well known by the general public thanks to the likes of twitter.
Says The Sun, on its website: “We dispatched our lawyers to the High Court to challenge the gagging order after the secrecy row descended even further into farce.
“Our legal move came after a picture purporting to be the star was splashed over the front page of a Scottish newspaper yesterday.
“Publication north of the border sparked thousands of new tweets on the social networking site, twitter, naming a player who users believe is the cheat.
“The new application came straight after the judge gave his written ruling rejecting a similar application made a week ago.”
It quotes its lawyer, Richard Spearman QC, saying: “If the dam had not burst by last Monday, it most certainly has burst now.”
Adds Sky News: “Mr Justice Eady rejected a fresh application by News Group Newspapers to discharge the privacy injunction relating to CTB [the acronym being given to the person] on the basis that to continue it would be 'futile', given recent widespread publicity about his identity.”
Eady is quoted, as saying: “It has never been suggested, of course, that there is any legitimate public interest, in the traditional sense, in publishing this information.
“The court's duty remains to try and protect the claimant, and particularly his family, from intrusion and harassment so long as it can.”
