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  1. Media Law
March 13, 2017

Privacy injunction stops The Sun naming man involved in police investigation over serious incident

By Dominic Ponsford

A celebrity has won an injunction barring a newspaper from naming him, although he is a witness in a serious police investigation into an alleged incident at his home, The Sun reported.

The newspaper said the man, who is being referred to as AJS, originally obtained a temporary order on 4 March, after it approached his employer for comment.

But on 10 March he returned to court to ask that the order should be extended.

The newspaper said he had not been arrested and there is no suggestion that he was a suspect.

Mr Justice Nicol granted the order, the newspaper said, although he also said that “what is at stake is not one of the ‘most intimate aspects of the claimant’s life’.

The judge also accepted that police had issued a public appeal for help in the case.

The Sun quoted former Metropolitan Police Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton as saying: “If you start to put the privacy of individuals, not even suspects, above helping to solve major crimes, that’s a serious and slippery slope.”

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This is the second case in which Mr Justice Nicol has been involved in issuing an injunction to stop the media naming an individual involved in a police investigation.

On 4 November last year he handed down a judgment in which he explained his reasons for having banned the Mail on Sunday from naming an extremely wealthy businessman who was interviewed under caution by police investigating suspected financial crime.

The man, referred to as ERY, sought the order after being told that the Mail on Sunday intended to publish a story reporting that his company had been drawn into a police investigation involving another firm with which it had had dealings.

Mr Justice Dove had granted an interim order against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, and Mail Online, during a telephone application hearing on 15 October.

The order was then continued following the hearing before Mr Justice Nicol.

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