Attorney-General v Greater Manchester Newspapers Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 04 December 2001 |
| Date | 04 December 2001 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Before Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, President
Publicity of information - breach of injunction - likely to lead to identification - notice of injunction to be proved to criminal standard of proof - accessability to general public - Stephens v Avery [1998] 1 Chancery 449 - AG v Guardian Newspapers No. 2 [1990] 1 AC 109
There was no ambiguity in the wording of an injunction which prohibited the publication of information "likely to lead to identification" where it was clear from the context that "likely" did not equate to statistical probability but to a real chance that the information would put lives at risk. Nor could information which was not realistically accessible to the general public be said to be in the public domain.
Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, President of the Family Division, sitting as an additional judge of the Queen's Bench Division, so held when granting an application by the Attorney-General to commit Greater Manchester Newspapers Ltd for contempt of court on the ground that on June 22, 2001 they had breached an order of January 8, 2001, whereby injunctions had been granted contra mundum to protect the lives and physical safety of the claimants in injunction proceedings, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, after their release from detention, by, inter alia, publishing in the Manchester Evening News information which was likely to lead to the identification of their whereabouts.
Mr Andrew Caldecott, QC and Mr Stephen Suttle for the Attorney-General; Mr Desmond Browne, QC and Mr Jacob Dean for the defendants.
THE PRESIDENT said that before the defendants could be held to be in breach of the order, the Attorney-General had to prove, to the criminal standard of proof, that they had had notice of the injunctions; that the information published was "likely to lead to the identification" of the past, present or future whereabouts of the injunction claimants; and that the information was not already in the public domain.
Although it appeared that the news editor responsible for publishing the information had believed that past whereabouts of the claimants were not covered by the contra mundum injunctions of January 8, 2001, it was not suggested that those at the Manchester Evening News were not aware of the broad thrust of the injunctions or the purposes they were intended to...
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