‘Stunt v Associated Newspapers Ltd [2018] EWCA Civ 1780 is a dispute between the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Mail Online, and the eye-wateringly rich former son-in-law of Berne Ecclestone about coverage of the latter by the former. Simply googling the claimant’s name and seeing the Mail Online headines gives some idea of why he might find that coverage less than flattering. It is, in short, a dispute where most people would like both sides to lose.Happily, thanks to the Court of the Appeal, they have. Both sides now have to fund a reference to the CJEU about the compatibility of section 32(4) of the Data Protection Act 1998 (still alive and kicking for these purposes) with Directive 95/46/EC, and the considerable delay built into that process. The reference was made because the Court split two to one (Sir Terence Etherton MR and Macfarlane LJ against Sharp LJ) on whether the stay mechanism imposed by section 32(4) was consistent with Article 9 of the Directive (freedom of expression rights) and Article 22 (effective remedy rights). At first instance, Popplewell J had found the provision to be a permissible implementation of the Directive.’

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Panopticon, 6th August 2018

Source: panopticonblog.com