The Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber) hears a lot of information rights appeals. What not all users of the UT, or readers of this blog, may have realised is that not all of its decisions – despite it being an appellate jurisdiction – are published online rendering them accessible to those interested in the area. Still fewer are then selected for reporting in the Administrative Appeals Case Reports, although we have our doubts whether anyone really uses the AACR. Is it time for a change of approach? Continue reading
Category: Information law
Webinar – The Online Harms Bill – More Harm Than Good?
11KBW Webinar – Thursday 20 May 2021 – 10:00-11:00
Presented by Anya Proops QC & Rupert Paines Continue reading
‘Stayin’ Appeals’ by the FTTGees – The Hottest Ticket(Master) in Town
The first major GDPR penalty notice appeal – Ticketmaster UK Ltd v Information Commissioner (EA/2020/0359/FP) – has been stayed by order of the First-tier Tribunal until 28 days after the handing down of judgment in civil litigation brought against Ticketmaster by some 795 Ticketmaster customers: Collins & Others v Ticketmaster UK Ltd (BL-2019-LIV-000007). Continue reading
EIR: Court of Justice gives guidance on the internal communications exception in Land Baden-Württemberg v DR
The Court of Justice recently gave guidance on the “internal communications” exception in the Environmental Information Directive 2003/4/EC. It gave its views on the principle that exceptions should be interpreted restrictively and the relevance of the Aarhus Convention Implementation Guide (tl;dr – internal is the opposite of external, to be a communication information has to be shared, there is no time limit on the exception, and neither the principle nor the Guide makes any difference to the outcome in the end).
Disclosure of Leakers
A potentially interesting judgment was handed down orally this morning by Tipples J, rejecting an application from a former Labour Party official to force the Labour Party to disclose the identity of those it believed leaked an internal report concerning the Party’s approach to antisemitism and the conduct of various officials. The Applicant, Ms Oldknow, whose data was contained in the leaked report, wished to uncover the identities of those individuals in order to bring proceedings against them. Continue reading
Newman v Southampton CC – Court of Appeal to livestream hearing on Thursday
Those who are keen observers of information law (who isn’t?) may be interested to know that the Court of Appeal will be live-streaming the hearing of Ms Newman’s appeal in this case on Thursday 4 March 2021. Proceedings may be observed here.
The Court of Appeal does not live-stream all appeal hearings, but only those in cases that it deems to be high profile and legally significant. This particular case is likely to be of special interest to media lawyers and those interested in the reconciliation of children’s and parents’ rights to (among other things) privacy.
For more background on the case, see our earlier posts on the original High Court decision and on the Court of Appeal’s decision on permission. In the latter decision, the Court of Appeal stated that:
‘The appeal raises a matter of significant public interest, namely the balance as between Article 8 and Article 10 where a responsible journalist seeks access to court papers; this includes consideration of the approach of the court to the Article 8 interests of a young child where a person with parental responsibility wishes to consent to full disclosure of all the court papers on behalf of the child, the subject of the proceedings.’
Anya Proops QC (of 11KBW) acts for the Appellant, Ms Newman, together with Zac Sammour (of 11KBW) and Kate Temple-Mabe (of 7BR). They are instructed by Elizabeth Morley of Howard Kennedy.