Stephen Glover, media commentator in the Independent, writes today about Mr Justice Eady’s latest injunction on privacy grounds, this time to do with the golfer Colin Montgomerie. Bizarrely, no one seems to know whether this is a so-called super-injunction, or simply a common-or-garden injunction: “Mr Justice Eady has [...] moved the goalposts” Glover writes. “And yet it is not clear exactly where they have been moved to”.

In a memorable phrase, Glover also reminds us about Eady’s judgement in the 2008 Max Mosley case, in which the judge decided Mosley had not been involved in a “Nazi orgy”, just a common-or-garden one, despite the fact that:

“Some of the participants donned uniforms for the occasion. Blood was shed, humiliations inflicted, and German spoken in a sado-masochistic free-for-all.”

Which is, I suppose, Glover’s way of saying “You could have fooled me”…

Postscript: In today’s Daily Telegraph there is an interview with Lord McNally, a Lib-Dem minister in the Ministry of Justice, who says there is a need for Parliament to devise a privacy law in order to remove the courts’ ability to develop case law in this area: “There was a danger that we were getting towards having privacy law by judicial decision,” McNally says. “If we are going to have a privacy law it should be openly debated and freely decided by Parliament.”

As I’ve said before, I’m not so sure a privacy law is the solution, and I see nothing wrong in principle with this aspect of the law developed as case law by the courts. The real problem, it seems to me, is that the courts – and Mr Justice Eady in particular – have created a serious imbalance between Article 8 and Article 10 of the ECHR, much too much in favour of the former, i.e. in favour of privacy protection at the expense of press freedom.

(This is of course where the McKennitt v. Ash judgement became pivotal, in the sense that it “allowed for” the subsequent judgements to happen, including Mosley, in all its absurdities).

Postscript 2… And then there was another super-injunction, this time by an England footballer…

Mr Justice Eady gave a speech at City University in London last Wednesday – the text of the speech is here – in which he, rather surprisingly, acknowledges that the introduction of the ECHR into English law has “undoubtedly [had] an inhibiting effect on the exercise of our freedom of expression”.

Press commentator Steven Glover in the Independent today (scroll down) compares Eady’s comments to Richard Dawkins suddenly contemplating the existence of God.

In relation to McKennitt v. Ash, Eady says (on p. 9) that the obligation on the English courts to apply “Strasbourg jurisprudence” in privacy cases like that, i.e. where no previous domestic rules existed, represented “a fresh breeze blowing from the continent”. I have to say, it didn’t feel particularly fresh at the time.

Mr Justice Eady, the presiding judge not only in McKennitt v. Ash but in every other important privacy case since, has spoken out against the wide-spread criticism of his decisions, and of him personally (The Guardian’s report is here). In particular, it seems Eady felt strongly about Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre’s comments (on the judge’s “moral and social nihilism”) following the Max Mosley case.

Alongside the paper version of the Guardian’s piece (not online) is a short summary of McKennitt v. Ash:

In 2005, Mr Justice Eady granted an injunction to the Canadian folk singer Loreena McKennitt to prevent publication of parts of a book called ‘Travels with Loreena McKennitt: My Life as a Friend’. Eady ruled that the “private” information disclosed in the book, written by McKennitt’s former friends Niema Ash, included a description of McKennit’s home, its decor, layout and state of cleanliness. The case has become an important part of the law on privacy, widening the scope of what is considered private and raising the bar for people seeking to justify publishing private information.

En annoterad version av Carter-Rucks “super-injunction” i Trafiguraaffären finns nu att studera här (pdf). The G:s chefredaktör Alan Rusbridger skriver om det hela här.

You don’t expect Guardian columnist George Monbiot to mince his words, and the meat of what he’s saying is delivered entirely uncut today, when he writes about Mr Justice Eady’s “reign of terror” and “a government of frightened little men”, particularly in the shape of Jack Straw, the Minister of Justice.

Although it may not come as news to us, the list of Eady’s, erm, achievements is quite astounding, and their ramifications even more so: US state after US state is now refusing to accept libel verdicts delivered in English courts, for example.

It will be interesting, to put it mildly, to see what happens when (rather than if) one of Eady’s judgements reaches the new Supreme Court (which has recently replaced what used to be known as “the Law Lords”). It’s obvious from the instances Monbiot lists that many judges senior to Eady are getting increasingly alarmed at his findings.

This, from today’s Guardian newspaper, is worth quoting quite extensively.

Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

Those of you who have followed Pressylta postings on McKennitt v Ash (for the past few millennia, it seems…) will be intrigued to find out what fresh doo-dah has been cooked up by our learned friends this time. So will I.

Three minutes later: The utter nonsense inherent in these gagging orders becomes only too obvious once you’ve entered the relevant keywords into Google… I now know everything about something I would have known nothing about, had Carter-Ruck not acted the way they did. That’ll learn’em. Or maybe not.

Later p.m.: And so the gag has been lifted: for further info follow the links Fredrik provides in the comments. There is in law, as we know, a particularly thin line between the outrageous and the ludicrous. Outfits like Carter-Ruck have made an art form out of strutting that line, while looking murderously serious at the same time. If you ever wondered what a “PR disaster” looks like, look no further.

Roy Greenslade, ex-Mirror editor and media blogger for The Guardian, also writes a Wednesday column for the London Evening Standard. Today, following the Desmond v. Bower trial, where Greenslade was a witness for the defence, he writes an unusually critical piece on Mr Justice Eady, a piece which is lent all the more weight by the fact that Greenslade has tried to be scrupulously fair to Eady in the past, both agreeing and disagreeing with his various judgements (McKennitt v. Ash “profoundly” in the latter category, as he says).

Richard Desmond’s libel case against Tom Bower was – unusually – resolved in the defendant’s favour last week. Roy Greenslade summarises the issues involved in Media Guardian today.

Greenslade aside, there are one or two other shades of McKennitt v. Ash, too. One is the controversial role of Mr Justice Eady, who was twice overruled on admissability by the Appeal Court, in the strongest of terms. Another one is the peripheral-but-crucial role played by Benjamin Pell, a.k.a. Benji the Binman (pictured left; read Matthew Bell’s piece in the Independent today).

I had the pleasure of meeting and, not so much talking as listening to Benji during McKennitt v. Ash, especially in the later stages in 2006. He is a most extraordinary character and, despite his many eccentricities, I know a lot of media lawyers have a lot of time for him, and for his encyclopaedic knowledge of media, privacy and defamation law. If and when Benji ever has his day in court against Richard Desmond, I for one will book a ticket to the public gallery forthwith.

Panorama, the flagship documentary strand on BBC1, tonight broadcast a piece by Clive Coleman on press freedom and “developing privacy law“, and Pressylta highly recommends it. Should you be able to figure out how to watch it online, do do.

One thing struck me, a very minor thing, but nonetheless: the law firm Schillings seem to be the most aggressive (in letter-writing terms) when it comes to killing investigative stories in their infancy, at least if you listen to Ian Hislop of Private Eye. What happened to Carter Ruck, though? Gone soft…?

Incidentally, one day I’ll post something here on the fine art of passive-aggressive letter-writing, as practised by libel and privacy lawyers. Amazing stuff. Grammatically incoherent, usually, but amazing stuff.

The controversies surrounding libel law in England are hugely important and wide-ranging and, although the issues are different from the “developing law on privacy”, the two areas overlap in significant respects, not least to do with CFA’s, or no-win-no-fee arrangements. Roy Greenslade writes a very useful column on the subject in the Evening Standard today, well worth reading, not least because it relates Mr Justice Eady’s (rather modest, as it turns out) fears regarding freedom of expression…