Shock decision: sportsman not unmasked

The identity of the sportsman officially known as JIH remains confidential.

Those newspapers hoping to unmask him in the event that the Court of Appeal upheld the decision of Tugendhat J have had to content themselves with short court reports accompanied by silhouettes (presumably not of the real person): example here.

Those readers wishing to remind themselves of the original decision by Tugendhat J are referred to our earlier blog on the subject which has now been amended to take account of the Court of Appeal's decision.  An excellent summary of the decision by Edward Craven of Matrix Chambers appears on the Inforrm blog here.    In summary, the Court of Appeal decided that if JIH's name became public, and even if the court ordered that the nature of the allegedly private information should not be disclosed, there was a real risk that the purpose of the injunction would be defeated since existing media stories would enable people to put the pieces together and deduce the nature of the very information publication of which JIH was seeking to protect.

See further sections 3.9.1 and 10.3 of The Privacy Law Handbook