May we have our emails back?

Posted on | by Daniel Stilitz KC

In Fairstar Heavy Transport NV v (1) Philip Jeffrey Adkins (2) Claranet Ltd [2013] EWCA Civ 886 the Court of Appeal has considered what right a company has to obtain work-related emails held by its former CEO on his personal computer.

The facts were unusual, which may be why the question proved more difficult to answer than might have been expected.  The CEO had been engaged by the claimant through his own company, and so was a consultant rather than an employee.  Following the termination of his employment, he refused (for reasons which are not clear) to comply with the company’s request for copies of all the work-related emails held on his own computer.  The company accordingly applied for an order for inspection of the content of the relevant emails.  Significantly, there was no claim by the company that the contents of the emails were confidential or amounted to trade secrets.

At first instance, the matter proceeded by way of an agreed issue, namely: did the company have “an enforceable proprietary claim to the content of the emails”.  That being the issue before him, Edwards-Stuart J at first instance concluded that the content of the emails to which the company claimed a proprietary right was “information”; that according to the authorities there can be no property in mere information; and that the company therefore did not have the proprietary right on which it  based its claim.

Mummery LJ (giving the only substantive judgment in the Court of Appeal) decided that the parties had asked the court to answer the wrong question.  For Mummery LJ, the key point was that Mr Adkins had, in his CEO role, been an agent of Fairstar.  He cited the long line of authority illustrating the rule that a principal or employer is entitled to delivery up of original documents retained or removed by an agent or employee relating to transactions undertaken on the principal’s behalf.  Although emails are electronic documents, they are documents nonetheless, and the same rule should apply to them.

The appeal was therefore allowed, with Mummery LJ deprecating the arid debate below as to the whether an email contained only “information” and as to whether “information” can ever be “property”.  He specifically declined, however, to endorse the proposition that there can never be property in information: “Some kinds of information, such as non-patentable know-how, are more akin to property in their specificity and exclusivity than, say, personal information about private life”.

The point would probably have been much more straightforward Mr Adkins been an employee, since most contracts of employment and IT policies state expressly that all work-related emails belong to the employer.

The question remains open, however, as to whether non-confidential “information”, which does not amount to intellectual property, can ever be proprietary in nature.  Mummery LJ seemed to think that, depending on its nature and quality, it might.

Daniel Stilitz QC

Construction industry disputes

Posted on | by James Goudie KC

The balance of public interest was “very strongly” in favour of maintaining the confidentiality of documents in order to “protect the course of justice” both in Jackson v Info Commissioner, EA 2012/0263, FTT Decision on 19 July 2013, and in “many other such disputes” said Judge Hughes.  The value of the disclosure of the material was limited.  The adverse impact of disclosure on dispute resolution was substantial.  Judge Hughes concluded: “If there were to be change in the arrangements underpinning construction dispute resolution then this should be explored through a careful process of public debate and consultation leading to an amendment of the statutory framework.”

Cambridgeshire County Council (“the Council”) had entered into a major construction contract with BAM Nuttall for the construction of a guided busway extending 16 miles from Huntingdon to Trumpington.  There have been disputes between the parties to the contract over delays and cost-overruns which have attracted public concern.  In July 2011 the Council launched proceedings in the Technology and Construction Court (“the TCC”) against BAM Nuttall.  The proceedings continue.

Dr Jackson submitted an information request to the Council.  The Council responded.  Further, the Council advised that an application to the TCC had been made.  The Council resisted the request relying on Regulations 12(5)(b) and (f) and 13(1) of the Environmental Information Regulations.

Dr Jackson complained to the Information Commissioner.  The Commissioner upheld the Council’s position, relying on Regulation 12(5), adverse effect on the course of justice.

The FTT was satisfied that this exemption was engaged.  There was a substantial dispute between the Council and BAM Nuttall which was before the Court.  It had been preceded by adjudications held within a scheme which provided for confidentiality and where the statutory framework underpinning the scheme recognised the value of confidentiality.  The ability of parties to communicate on a without prejudice basis underlined the point that parties do deal in a candid way within the adjudication process.  The FTT was satisfied on the evidence that in this specific case there would be an adverse effect on the current litigation if there was disclosure.

Moreover, there was a further more general adverse effect that a decision would call into question the effectiveness of the ADR arrangements for construction disputes, which very often involve a public sector purchaser.  The lack of confidentiality of the ADR stages of such disputes would make the resolution harder to achieve and impact adversely on subsequent litigation, and so on the course of justice.

A Mixed Week for Prince Charles

Posted on | by Christopher Knight

Prince Charles has had an interesting week. In an announcement eagerly awaited by the massed ranks of the world’s media, with live coverage continuing interminably on all news channels, a small piece of paper was placed on a gilded easel which informed the impatient public that on 25 July 2013 Lord Judge CJ was delivered of permission to appeal against the Divisional Court’s judgment in support of the veto over release of the Prince of Wales’ correspondence with Ministers. The Court of Appeal will accordingly hear the appeal in R (Evans) v HM Attorney General (see Panopticon posts ad nauseam) in due course.

Oh, and apparently there was something about a baby this week. This has no direct implications for information law and so will be of no interest to readers of this blog.

Christopher Knight

Anonymity: publication and open justice

Posted on | by Robin Hopkins

The tension between transparency and individual privacy is part of what makes information rights such a fascinating and important area. When it comes to high-public interest issues involving particular individuals, prevailing wisdom has tended to be something like this: say as much as possible on an open basis, but redact and anonymise so as to protect the identity of the individuals involved. Increasingly, however, transparency is outmuscling privacy. See for example my post about the Tribunal’s order of disclosure, in the FOIA context, of the details of the compensation package of a Chief Executive of an NHS Trust (the case of Dicker v IC (EA/2012/0250).

The recent Care Quality Commission debate is the highest-profile recent illustration: the health regulator published a consultant’s report into failings regarding the deaths of babies at Furness General Hospital, but withheld the names of the individuals being criticised (including for alleged ‘cover-ups’), relying on the Data Protection Act 1998. The anonymisation was not endorsed by the Information Commissioner, and attracted widespread criticism in media and political circles. Transparency pressures held sway.

In a similar vein, the BBC has come under great pressure over the past week – particularly from Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee – to reveal the names of approximately 150 departing senior managers who received pay-offs averaging £164,000 in the past three years. As the Telegraph reports, the Committee is threatening to use parliamentary privilege to publish those names. The BBC admits that it “got things wrong” by overpaying in many cases (as confirmed by the National Audit Office), but is concerned to protect the DPA and privacy rights of the affected individuals, as well as to safeguard its own independence. The Committee says the public interest in transparency is compelling; Lord Patten, chair of the BBC Trust, says there will be “one hell of an argument” about this.

Such arguments become all the more thorny in the context of open justice disputes, of which there have been a number in recent weeks.

In the matter of Global Torch Ltd/Apex Global Management Ltd (The Guardian, The Financial Times and others intervening) [2013] EWCA Civ 819 involved competing petitions of unfair prejudice alleging misconduct in the affairs of a particular company. Two Saudi Arabian princes and one of their private advisers applied to have the interlocutory hearings held in private under CPR rule 39.2(3). The Court of Appeal agreed with the judge who dismissed those applications. It rejected the contention that the judge had elevated open justice above Article 8 ECHR rights as a matter of law. Rather, he noted that some general presumptions were valid (for example, open justice is likely to trump reputational damage) and applied those in the factual context of this case. Maurice Kay LJ said  (paragraph 34) that there was sometimes a “need for a degree of protection so as to avoid the full application of the open justice principle exposing a victim to the very detriment which his cause of action is designed to prevent… If such an approach were to be extended to a case such as the present one, it could equally be applied to countless commercial and other cases in which allegations of serious misconduct are made. That would result in a significant erosion of the open justice principle. It cannot be justified where adequate protection exists in the form of vindication of the innocent through the judicial process to trial”.

Open justice is of course fundamental not only to freedom of expression, but is also the default setting for fair trials. This is illustrated in the regulatory/disciplinary context by Miller v General Medical Council [2013] EWHC 1934 (Admin). The case involved a challenge to a decision by a Fitness to Practise Panel of the Council’s Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service that a fitness to practise hearing should take place in private because it considered that the complainant, a former patient of the claimant, was otherwise unlikely to give evidence. HHJ Pelling quashed the decision; there was insufficient evidence for the Panel’s conclusion about witness participation, and in any event the Panel “fell into error at the outset by not reminding itself sufficiently strongly or at all that the clear default position under Article 6 is that the hearing should be in public. It failed to remind itself that Article 6 creates or declares rights that are the rights of the Claimant and that it was for the GMC to prove both the need for any derogation from those rights and for a need to derogate to the extent claimed” (paragraph 20).

Robin Hopkins

The Prince Charles veto: JR fails due to availability of JR

Posted on | by Robin Hopkins

As Chris Knight reported this morning, judgment has been handed down in R (Evans) v HM Attorney General [2013] EWHC 1960 (Admin). The Upper Tribunal had ordered disclosure of certain correspondence between Prince Charles and government ministers (termed ‘advocacy correspondence’). The government – the Attorney General specifically – exercised the power of veto under section 53 of FOIA. The requester, Guardian journalist Rob Evans, brought judicial review proceedings. The Administrative Court dismissed his claim.

It did so despite “troublesome concerns” about the section 53, which it considered to be a “remarkable provision”.

For example, the Lord Chief Justice said: “The possibility that a minister of the Crown may lawfully override the decision of a superior court of record involves what appears to be a constitutional aberration” (paragraph 2); “It is an understatement to describe the situation as unusual. Indeed the researches of counsel suggest that it is a unique situation and that similar statutory arrangements cannot be found elsewhere in this jurisdiction” (paragraph 9); “It is not quite a pernicious “Henry VIII clause”, which enables a minister to override statute but, unconstrained, it would have the same damaging effect on the rule of law” (paragraph 10).

Nonetheless, a close examination of the wording and features of section 53 satisfied the court that it was not flawed on constitutional grounds. Parliament was mindful of what it was doing in enacting section 53. There are strict time limits and limits on who can issue a section 53 certificate; it must be laid before Parliament with reasons, it must be made on “reasonable grounds” and “the jurisdiction of the courts does not even purport to be ousted” (paragraph 81 in the judgment of Davis LJ). In effect, Parliament chose to build section 53 into a FOIA as an express check and balance on disclosure.

The Lord Chief Justice summed up the court’s assessment of section 53: “These provide that the ministerial override will be ineffective unless reasonable grounds for its exercise are identified. These reasons must be laid before Parliament for scrutiny and, if appropriate, parliamentary action. Making the reasons public in this way ensures that they are also immediately available for press and public scrutiny and, if appropriate, critical comment. More important, perhaps, is that the override decision of the minister is not final. The exercise of the override is itself subject to judicial scrutiny” (paragraph 13).

The court considered the meaning of “on reasonable grounds”, the key language from section 53. What standard did this connote? Davis LJ said “reasonable” meant just that: it did not needed to be glossed either by reference to Wednesbury standards, nor by reference to any higher standard.

The court was persuaded that the statement of the Attorney General’s reasons in this case did indeed demonstrate “reasonable grounds” for the decision. The Attorney General had guided himself by the government’s published policy which states that the veto will only be used in exceptional cases. He had considered and engaged with the Upper Tribunal’s decision. He addressed both FOIA and the EIR. He gave his view that great weight should be attributed to the importance of the convention of preparation for kingship, the need to avoid a chilling effect on related communications, the preservation of confidences and the need to avoid damage to the perception of political neutrality. The Commissioner himself had agreed with those factors and conclusions in his decision notice.

In the court’s view, the Attorney General’s reasons ‘made sense’. There can be “cogent” arguments for and against disclosure (as indeed the Upper Tribunal acknowledged were present in this case), and FOIA/EIR public interest assessments are not so much matters of fact or law (or a mix of both), but are exercises in evaluation. In that light, if it was said that the Attorney General could not simply prefer his own opinion to that of the Upper Tribunal, the rhetorical answer was “why not?”. Moreover, he was entitled to address the correspondence as a whole, rather than on a document-by-document basis.

Mr Evans had also argued that insofar as the veto related to environmental information, it was incompatible with the “access to justice” provisions of the Aarhus Convention and of the Environmental Information Directive. The court was not persuaded: the availability of judicial review sufficed for those purposes.

The Guardian has announced its intention to appeal.

Postscript:

It should also be remembered that this is not the only strand of the Rob Evans/Prince of Wales letters litigation. As Panopticon reported earlier this year, the Upper Tribunal has separately ordered disclosure of a schedule describing the withheld information. That decision is also subject to appeal: it has not (yet?) been vetoed. The saga continues.

Robin Hopkins

Prism and Tempora: Privacy International commences legal action

Posted on | by Robin Hopkins

Panopticon has reported in recent weeks that, following the Edward Snowden/Prism disclosures, Liberty has brought legal proceedings against the UK’s security bodies. This week, Privacy International has announced that it too is bringing a claim in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal – concerning both the Prism and Tempora programmes. It summarises its claim in these terms:

“Firstly, for the failure to have a publicly accessible legal framework in which communications data of those located in the UK is accessed after obtained and passed on by the US National Security Agency through the Prism programme.  Secondly, for the indiscriminate interception and storing of huge amounts of data via tapping undersea fibre optic cables through the Tempora programme.”

Legal complaints on Prism-related transfers have been made elsewhere on data protection grounds also. A group of students who are members of a group called Europe vs. Facebook have filed complaints to the data protection authorities in Ireland (against Facebook and Apple), Luxembourg (against Skype and Microsoft) and Germany (against Yahoo).

European authorities have expressed concerns on these issues in their own right. For example, the Vice President of the European Commission, Viviane Reding, has written to the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, about the Tempora programme, and has directed similar concerns at the US (including in a piece in the New York Times). The European Parliament has also announced that a panel of its Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs will be convened to investigate the Prism-related surveillance of EU citizens. It says the panel will report by the end of 2013.

In terms of push-back within the US, it has been reported that Texas has introduced a bill strengthening the requirements for warrants to be obtained before any emails (as opposed to merely unread ones) can be disclosed to state and local law enforcement agencies.

Further complaints, litigation and potential legal challenges will doubtless arise concerning Prism, Tempora and the like.

Robin Hopkins