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Daily Mail fails in appeal over Paul Weller privacy rights ruling

By | Published on Monday 23 November 2015

Paul Weller

Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers has lost the appeal in its legal battle with Paul Weller over the publication of photos of his family while shopping in LA in 2012.

As previously reported, Weller won damages for three of his children and secured an injunction against the Mail last year. At the time, the newspaper said the ruling would have “serious consequences” for all media, adding that “our publication of the images was entirely in line with the law in California where they were taken by a freelance photographer”.

It also noted that Weller’s eldest child had once modelled for Teen Vogue, and that “images of the babies’ naked bottoms have been tweeted by their mother, and their father has discussed the children in promotional interviews”.

But appeal judges last week upheld the original judgement. Both Weller and his manager told said judges that the singer only ever discussed his family in public when specifically questioned about them in interviews, that he never volunteered any information about his children, and that he refused requests for interviews focused on his personal life.

The singer added that, while his teenage daughter Dylan has been registered with a modelling agency for about one year and had done one shoot for Teen Vogue, she was “not a model in any meaningful sense”, and that activity should not affect her right to privacy.

On the jurisdiction point, judge John Dyson said: “Although it was lawful to take the photographs of the claimants, and it would have been lawful to publish them in California, this did not prevent the claimants having a reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to their publication in this jurisdiction”.

Which meant that the case hinged on the balancing of the privacy and free speech rights contained within the European Convention On Human Rights, ie the Weller family’s privacy rights versus the Mail’s right to free speech.

And on this point, the appellate judges concurred with the lower court, saying that, given the environment in which the pictures were taken, and the fact they featured clearly identifiable minors, the Weller children’s privacy rights gazump the newspaper’s free speech, and the initial ruling should therefore stand.

Despite the Mail claiming that the initial ruling set important precedents for celebrity journalism in general (it also argued it put UK publishers at a disadvantage to US rivals in the online celeb gossip game), the appeal court judges refused Associated permission to take the case further to the UK Supreme Court.



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