High Court Rules That Public Interest Defence Is, In Principle, Available In Both Breach Of Confidence And Misuse Of Private Information Claims

• Published date: 14 June 2021
• Subject Matter: Privacy, Data Protection
• Law Firm: Wiggin
• Author: Mr Michael Browne

Facts

The claimants issued proceedings against the defendants for misuse of private information and breach of confidence in relation to the alleged unlawful access, retention and deployment by the defendants of certain emails that the claimants said were private and confidential to them.

The defendants denied both claims. They also said that, in any event, even if the factual elements for either of the claimants' claims were made out, they would be entitled to rely on the defence that there was a public interest in accessing, retaining and sharing the emails and the data contained in them. The defendants said that they had stumbled lawfully across the claimants' private information (though the claimants alleged them to have broken into it) and then sought to retain that which the defendants claimed (and the claimants denied) to be evidence of wrongdoing by the claimants against creditors and insolvency officials, in order to pass it on to those officials and to relevant victims. In other words, it was in the public interest to access, retain and share the emails and data within such emails.

It was decided to try the question of whether this "iniquity defence" was available to the defendants as a matter of law as a preliminary issue.

Decision

His Honour Judge Paul Matthews, sitting as a Judge of the High Court, disagreed with the claimants' argument that, following the enactment of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which provides for a right to respect for private life, the only defences available to a misuse of private information claim were those in Article 8(2) (no interference by a public authority) or Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the ECHR. HHJ Matthews said that Article 8(2) and Article 10 were in fact wide enough to cover the parameters of the public interest defence, as it is understood in relation to claims in breach of confidence. In his view, it was formalistic to worry about whether there was such a defence under that name in relation to claims for misuse of private information, or whether strictly speaking it was only the terms of Article 8(2) or Article 10 (or, indeed, some other Article) which could provide a defence. The real point was that the...