Paul Weller’s children win privacy case

Friday 4 December 2015

It’s all too easy to be hypocritical when it comes to photographs of celebrities – appreciating that someone has a right to a private life doesn’t always stop us heading to the showbiz section of a newspaper’s website to see the latest pictures of someone famous going about their daily business.

The result of this moral flexibility is that there is a great deal of money to be made from publishing these pictures and newspapers and magazines are, understandably perhaps given the commercial pressures, always looking to get away with as much as they can.

A recent case involving the Daily Mail has confirmed the limits on them when they do.

The case was brought by Paul Weller on behalf of his children in relation to an article published on the Daily Mail website which featured photographs of his children, Dylan, John Paul and Bowie, without any pixellation. Mr Weller won in the High Court and the Mail took the case to the Court of Appeal where it was unsuccessful again.

Every time the Court has to decide a claim for breach of privacy it carries out a balancing exercise between on the one hand the Claimant’s right to a private life and on the other the Defendant’s right to freedom of speech.

In this case, as part of that exercise, the Court of Appeal confirmed what most media lawyers had already understood to be the case: that it is possible for people to be involved in private activities even if they are in a public place – the Wellers were having lunch and going shopping in public places but they were engaged in a private family activity so they could reasonably expect privacy in doing so.

The Court also made a point of highlighting that the fact the subjects of the photographs in question were children (John Paul and Bowie were in fact less than one year old) and they had not knowingly put themselves in a situation where they might be photographed meant it was much more likely that there was a strong right to privacy.

The Mail also tried to argue that when it carried out its balancing exercise the High Court had not paid enough attention to the fact that publication of the photos would have been lawful in California, where they were taken. The Court of Appeal declined to accept the argument and agreed with the High Court that the point was not a good one anyway as the photos were published in the UK and it was the laws of the UK which should be given the most weight in those circumstances.

This judgment may not be the bitterest pill the Mail has ever had to swallow, but it has certainly made it clear that they, and other publications, will have to tread carefully in the future.