Search Results for: prisoners/page/34/ministers have been procrastinating on the issue, fearing that it will prove unpopular with the electorate.

The Return of the Round-up!

4 March 2015 by Hannah Lynes

After a brief hiatus, the Human Rights Round-up is back. Our new team of expert summarisers – Hannah Lynes, Alex Wessely and Laura Profumo – is installed and ready to administer your regular dose of UK human rights news.

This week, Hannah reports on the Global Law Summit, access to justice, and what’s happening in the courts.

In the News

‘If you wrap yourself in the Magna Carta…you are inevitably going to look ridiculous if you then throw cold water on an important part of its legacy.’ Lord Pannick QC was not alone last week (23-28th February) in suggesting that there was some irony in Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling evoking the spirit of the Magna Carta at his launch of the three-day Global Law Summit.

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Quantifying Damages for Breach of Privacy

25 October 2016 by Gideon Barth

TLT and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWHC 2217 (QB)

How do you quantify damages for data breaches? Is the distress caused by an accidental data breach comparable to phone-hacking? Should damages for distress be equivalent to damages for psychiatric injuries?

In October 2013, the Home Office published statistics on its family returns process, the means by which children with no right to remain in the UK are sent back to their country of origin. In addition to anonymised statistics uploaded onto the government website, the Home Office mistakenly uploaded the spreadsheet of raw data on which those statistics were based. That spreadsheet included personal details such as names and rough geographical locations of applicants for asylum or leave to remain, though not their addresses. The data was online for 13 days before being removed, but a number of IP addresses in the UK and abroad visited the relevant web page.  Those concerned were notified, and brought claims under the Data Protection Act 1998 and the common law tort of misuse of private information.

As far as privacy breaches go, this appears less sinister than having the contents of your private telephone conversations splashed across the front pages. But consider the effect on these individuals at a time when their residence status is uncertain. Taking one example, an Iranian man – referred to as TLT – had applied for leave to remain with his family. They had been told that a member of their family had been detained in Iran and questioned about them. They reasonably believed that the Iranian authorities would have looked at the published details and, as a result, they feared for their lives if they were returned to Iran, their security in the UK and their extended family in Iran. A significant issue is how to quantify ‘distress’ of that nature for the purposes of claims brought.

Judgment

It was not in dispute that the inadvertent publication of the information constituted misuse of private information and a breach of the first, second and seventh principles of the Data Protection Act. Neither was it in dispute that, following the Court of Appeal decision in Vidal-Hall v Google Inc [2015] EWCA Civ 311, a claimant can recover damages for ‘distress’ for such a breach.

But Mitting J’s judgment is interesting for two reasons. First, it tackled four questions which will provide guidance for similar claims in the future. Secondly, and perhaps more controversially, he considered the quantification of damages for individual breaches in this new and developing area of law.

1. Can individuals who were not named in the data, but who were identifiable as family members, recover?

Simply, yes. Given that the data related to family asylum or leave to remain applications, Mitting J found that anyone with knowledge of the family would be able to identify the children and other family members from the lead applicant.

2. Is there a level of distress which is below the threshold for the recovery of damages?

Again, and perhaps unsurprisingly, yes: the de minimis threshold which applies in personal injury cases also applies to data breaches.

3. Should the courts take guidance from the damages awards in the phone-hacking cases – or, as Mitting J referred to them, “cases involving deliberate dissemination for gain by media publishers or individuals engaged in that trade, such as Max Clifford” [16]?

Without going into any detail, this idea was dismissed by Mitting J. The distress described by the claimants was comparable to a psychiatric injury suffered as a result of an actionable wrong.

4. Can you recover damages for the loss of the right to control private information?

Yes – a claimant can recover for the loss of control of personal and confidential information but there is no separate and additional award. Rather, the judge takes it into account when making an award for distress.

Damages awards and Gulati

Mitting J made awards ranging from £2,500 to £12,500 for each claimant, using psychiatric and psychological damage cases as guideline comparators after carefully assessing the evidence of the applicants and the distress caused by the data breaches. In Gulati v MGN [2015] EWCA Civ 1291 – one of the phone-hacking cases – the Court of Appeal affirmed the principle that damages for non-pecuniary loss for the misuse of private information should have some “reasonable relationship” with damages for personal injury. Arden LJ explained the reason for this [61]:

“if there is no such consideration or relationship, the reasonable observer may doubt the logic of the law or form the view that the law places a higher value on a person’s right to privacy than it does on (say) a person’s lifelong disability as a result of another’s negligence, and this would bring the law into disrepute and diminish public confidence in the impartiality of the legal system.”

However, this rationale also undermines the very basis on which Mitting J made awards. A claimant in a psychiatric personal injury case must demonstrate that they have suffered a recognised psychiatric injury; simple distress is not sufficient. The awards in TLT take into account the loss of control of private information, but are predominantly awards for distress. None of the individuals were shown to have suffered a recognised psychiatric injury as a consequence of the publication of their details, yet their damages awards were made by comparison to those for recognised and diagnosed psychiatric injury.

In seeking consistency, this judgment sits uncomfortably with psychiatric damage cases. Was Arden LJ’s warning prophetic? If Mitting J’s approach is followed in the future, will the reasonable observer form the view that the law places a higher value on a person’s right to privacy than a lifelong disability?

Oliver Sanders and Michael Deacon of One Crown Office Row acted for the Defendants in this case. This blog post was written independently by Gideon Barth.

AI sued by image library for intellectual property infringement in training models

7 November 2025 by Rosalind English

Stability AI (Defendant) [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch)

The legal dispute between Getty Images (and its associated companies) and Stability AI revolves around complex issues of copyright infringement, database rights, trademark infringement, and passing off. The arguments centred on the use of Getty Images’ visual content in the training and operation of Stability AI’s generative AI model, Stable Diffusion. Media firm Mischcon de Reya has acclaimed this as the “one of the most anticipated cases in recent years.” The case has significant implications for intellectual property law as it intersects with the development and deployment of AI technologies in the UK.

Background and Parties
The claimants in the case are several related companies under the Getty Images brand. These entities collectively own or have exclusive licenses over millions of high-quality photographic and artistic images referred to as the “Visual Assets” or “Copyright Works.”
Stability AI Limited, the defendant, is a UK-based company that developed the Stable Diffusion AI model, which is a deep learning image generation tool that creates images based on text or image prompts, including around 12.3 million visual assets, together with associated captions, from the Getty Images websites, as well as publicly accessible third-party websites.

According to Getty Images Stability AI scraped millions of their copyright-protected images from its websites without authorisation.

The Core Claims
Getty Images initially brought a broad claim including allegations of primary and secondary copyright infringement, database right infringement, trademark infringement, and passing off. They argued that:
• Stability AI unlawfully used Getty’s copyrighted works without permission to train the AI model.
• The AI model outputs sometimes reproduced Getty’s images or bore their trademarks (watermarks), infringing Getty’s rights.
• Stability AI’s making of the model weights available for download constituted secondary copyright infringement. (Model weights are the values that determine how inputs are transformed into outputs in a neural network, reflecting the strength and direction of connections between artificial neurons after training. During training, optimisation procedures adjust these weights so the model improves at a task; the final set of weights effectively encodes the model’s learned “knowledge” from data. These “weights” are machine-readable parameters, distinct from source code text; they are large arrays of numbers that operationalise the model’s behaviour rather than human-authored narrative code.
• Use of Getty’s trademarked watermarks within generated images constituted trademark infringement.

As the judge observed,

Both sides emphasise the significance of this case to the different industries they represent: the creative industry on one side and the AI industry and innovators on the other. Where the balance should be struck between the interests of these opposing factions is of very real societal importance. Getty Images deny that their claim represents a threat to the AI industry or an attempt to curtail the development and use of AI models such as Stable Diffusion. However, their case remains that if creative industries are exploited by innovators such as Stability without regard to the efforts and intellectual property rights of creators, then such exploitation will pose an existential threat to those creative industries for generations to come.” [para 12]

In her summary of the judgment, Nina O’Sullivan of Mischcon de Reya observes that attention will now turn to the response to the government’s consultation on copyright and GenAI, as it faces pressure from creative industries opposing a general text and data mining exception that would allow AI companies to scrape copyright works unless rights holders expressly opt out.” Getty Images v Stability AI: Unpacking the High Court’s judgment

Child detention: More smoke and mirrors

13 January 2011 by Rosalind English

R (on the application of) Reetha Suppiah and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department and Interveners [2011] EWHC 2 (Admin) – Read judgment

A high court judge has ruled that two asylum seekers and their children were unlawfully detained at Yarl’s Wood immigration centre last year.

This ruling will add fuel to the flames of the debate over whether the government is truly committed to ending the detention of children in immigration centres, or whether they intend merely to “minimise” it.

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The UK Internal Market Bill and the Mother of all Ouster Clauses – Ronan Cormacain

15 October 2020 by Guest Contributor

The United Kingdom Internal Market Bill is due for second reading in the House of Lords on 19 October 2020.  It is not an understatement to say that the Bill contains provisions which represent one of the most egregious assaults on the Rule of Law in recent times, nor is it an understatement to say that there is a remarkable hostility to it from across the political spectrum, and across the Brexit divide..  It has also united the UK’s legal profession against it.   In Reports for the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law here and here we pointed out how this violation of international law breaches the Rule of Law.  I have also previously argued that the Bill contains an unacceptable breach of domestic law.  The former Attorney General Dominic Grieve argued that the Bill contained an unacceptable ouster clause.  I wish now to hone that argument by characterising what is now clause 47 of the Bill as containing not just a simple ouster clause, but the mother of all ouster clauses.

Brief explanation / history of ouster clauses

An ouster clause is a provision in primary legislation which ousts the jurisdiction of the courts.  It deems that provision (or decisions made under or in accordance with that provision) as not susceptible to judicial challenge. An ouster clause makes the subject matter of the clause non-justiciable, putting it outside or beyond the reach of the courts.

Parliament and the courts have played a game of cat and mouse over ouster clauses for at least the last 70 years.

Amnesty International report criticises UK’s record on deportation and torture

27 May 2010 by Angus McCullough KC

Amnesty International published its 2010 Report yesterday, documenting torture and other human rights abuses around the world.

In relation to the UK, Amnesty’s report condemns the UK’s continuing reliance on “diplomatic assurances” in deportation cases where individuals were likely to be at risk of torture or other abuse if sent to countries where the Government accepts they would otherwise be abuse, in particular Algeria and Jordan. The report summarises that:

Reports implicating the UK in grave violations of human rights of people held overseas continued to emerge. Calls for independent investigations into the UK’s role in these violations went unheeded. The government’s attempts to return people to countries known to practise torture on the basis of “diplomatic assurances” (unenforceable promises from the countries where these individuals were to be returned) continued. The European Court of Human Rights found that, by detaining a number of foreign nationals without charge or trial (internment), the UK had violated their human rights. The implementation of measures adopted with the stated aim of countering terrorism led to human rights violations, including unfair judicial proceedings.

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Students, visas and the points system: difficulties in enforcement

12 April 2011 by Rosalind English

R(New London College) v Secretary of State for the Home Department  [2011] EWHC 856 (Admin) – read judgment

When she introduced the latest changes  to the points-based system for allowing entry into the United Kingdom the Home Secretary Theresa May said that “this package will stop the bogus students, studying meaningless courses at fake colleges…it will restore some sanity to our student visa system” (March 22 2011)
Whether these changes will alleviate any of the difficulties of applying the criteria to institutions that provide study courses for foreign nationals, only time will tell. This case illustrates some of these problems of enforcement.  

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Priests are not press meat, says Strasbourg

5 December 2012 by Rosalind English

Verlagsruppe News Gmbh and Bobi v Austria (Application no. 59631/09) HEJUD [2012] ECHR 2012 (04 December 2012)

Hard on the heels of the Facebook case, here is another legal dust up over the media’s sharp interest in any story involving allegations of inappropriate sexual relations, particularly in the Catholic church.

Following a police investigation into internet downloads, the principal of a Roman Catholic seminary in Austria became the target of unwelcome interest from the tabloid press, including the second applicant, who published a series of articles and photographs alleging that  Mr Küchl was engaging in homosexual relations with the seminarians. One article identified the seminarian principal, whose face was clearly identifiable from the accompanying photograph. The article was entitled “Go on!” (Trau dich doch). The sub-heading read “Porn scandal. Photographic evidence of sexual antics between priests and their students has thrown the diocese of St Pölten into disarray. First the principal and now the deputy principal have resigned. High-ranking dignitaries expect Kurt Krenn [the bishop of the diocese] to be removed from office.”
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Xenakis the fisherman and the tangle of EU law

22 September 2016 by Guest Contributor

Understanding Standing: Post 1 of 3

Recently, we posted on a proposed action against the European Commission, or, more precisely, the action of its president. The applicants’ greatest challenge in those proceedings will be to persuade the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg that they should be allowed to take their case at all; in other words, whether they have “standing” under the rules of the European Treaties. We are grateful therefore for an in depth analysis of the subject by regular UKHRB contributor Michael Rhimes.

Michael is currently fourth référendaire at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), and this and the following two posts on the subject are summaries of what he has set out in an article in the European Journal of Legal Studies  The views he expresses are personal only, and the article was written before he took up his current responsibilities at the CJEU.  

Introduction   

Standing is a hot topic in EU law, and it is certainly of considerable academic interest. The legal commentary in this area over the last 50 years would occupy a small mansion. I confess I am guilty of adding to this proliferation – my own 70 page contribution in the European Journal of Legal Studies may be found here. Yet it is also an area of great practical interest. This is because it is essential to have standing to directly challenge an EU act in the EU Courts. No standing means no admissibility, which means no case to be heard by the Courts.

The overall question to these three Posts is whether the EU provides effective judicial protection in relation to the challenging of EU norms. Each of the three Posts has a deliberately different scope and purpose.

1. The first is introductory. It summarises what standing is, introduces the main features of direct/indirect enforcement and explains how they are relevant to EU standing. It then offers an overview of the application of the heads of standing in Art 263(4) TFEU.
2. The second is technical. It examines the case-law under Art 263(4) TFEU offers a more detailed insight into the problems with the application of the three elements in the third head of standing.
3. The third is polemic. It seeks to explore how the application of effective judicial protection results in gaps in the ability to challenge EU law.

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Birth certificate cannot be retrospectively changed to reflect father’s gender reassignment

23 April 2015 by Rosalind English

JK, R(on the application of) v Secretary of State for Home Department and another [2015] EWHC 990 (Admin) 20 April 2015 – read judgment

This case concerned the rights of transgender women, and their families, in particular the right to keep private the fact that they are transgender.

The Court heard a challenge to the requirement in the UK’s birth registration system that men who had changed gender from male to female should be listed as the “father” on the birth certificates of their biological children. Having decided that this did engage the claimant’s privacy rights under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, in conjunction with the right not to be discriminated against under Article 14, the Court concluded that the interference was justified.

Factual and legal background

The clamant JK had been born male. She was married to a woman, KK, and the couple had two naturally conceived children. After the birth of the first child in 2012, JK was diagnosed with gender identity disorder and concomitant gender dysphoria. In October 2012, she started a course of feminising hormone treatment. The treatment pathway requires two years living as a female before consideration is given for referral for gender reassignment surgery. Before the claimant started feminising hormone therapy, KK fell pregnant a second time, again conceiving naturally by the claimant.
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Julian Assange: Bail granted and judge gives permission to tweet

14 December 2010 by Adam Wagner

Julian Assange, the founder and head of Wikileaks, has succeeded in an initial challenge to last week’s refusal to grant bail in his extradition case. And, in an appropriate nod to the internet age, the judge granted two people the right to tweet from the court.

The tweeters (definition: users of Twitter, a social website which allows people to post 140 character messages to people who chose to follow them) are Alexi Mostrous, a Times special correspondent, and Heather Brook, a writer. Mostrous tweeted at 14:30:

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Council’s decision to close elderly care home not unlawful

2 October 2014 by Rosalind English

Karia, R (on the application of) v Leicester City Council (Sir Stephen Silber, acting as High Court Judge)  [2014] EWHC 3105 (Admin) (30 September 2014)- read judgment

In a robust judgment Sir Stephen Silber has asserted that neither the ordinary laws of judicial review, nor the Equality Act nor the Human Rights Act require the courts to micro-manage the decisions of public authorities. Indeed the latter two statutory powers are not designed as a back door into a merits review of a decision that is restricted to the court’s review of the legality of a public sector decision.

Background facts and law

The claimant, a 101 year old woman of Gujarati descent, challenged the decision to close the care home which she has occupied since 1999. Her grounds of challenge were threefold:

1. that the Council had failed to take account of material issues of fact relating to the present and future levels of demand for residential care one provision

2. that it had reached its decision without due regard to the need under the Equality Act 2010 to avoid unlawful discrimination in the provision of services

3. and it had failed to take into account the impact of the closure on the claimant’s Article 8 rights

She also complained that she had a legitimate expectation of a home for life at Herrick Lodge and that the Council had not considered whether her needs could be met in alternative placements.

Although the judge was at pains to stress that as this was a judicial review application, it was not for him to assess the merits of the Council’s decision, merely its legality. Having done so, he concluded that the Council had not acted irrationally, nor had it  paid due regard to the need to advance equality of opportunity.

It is not for the Court to determine whether proper weight has been given to a factor where as here there has been proper appreciation of the potential impact of the decision on equality issues.

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More secret trials? No thanks

31 January 2012 by Adam Wagner

A child learns early that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it. Thankfully that principle does not apply to Government consultations and this is aptly demonstrated by a group of responses to the consultation into whether “closed material” (secret evidence) procedures should be extended to civil trials.

Of the responses that I have read, there is very little support for the proposals as they stand and, as journalist Joshua Rozenberg has pointed out, the most damning criticism has come from the very lawyers who are currently involved in “closed” proceedings.

If you are interested in the issue, the Joint Committee on Human Rights is hearing evidence on it today from two special advocates, including my co-editor Angus McCullough QC (see his post on the topic), as well as the current and former independent reviewers of terrorism legislation. The session begins at 2:20pm and can be watched live here.

As I did with the Bill of Rights Commission consultation, I asked people to send me their consultation responses. What follows is a wholly unscientific summary of the ones I received:

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Latest Law Pod UK: The Cumberlege Review with Marina Wheeler QC

22 October 2020 by Emma-Louise Fenelon

In Episode 128 Emma-Louise Fenelon talks to Marina Wheeler QC about the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review, better known as the Cumberlege Review, which investigated the response of England’s healthcare system to patients’ reports of harm from drugs and medical devices.

Since the report was published in July (available here), the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has indicated it will be taking a number of steps in response to the review (more information here). In recent weeks a number of questions were tabled asking what the government plans to do next in response.

The episode includes a discussion about consent, and reference to Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board [2015] UKSC 11

Find an article written by Marina Wheeler QC and Amelia Walker on the Cumberlege Review on page 5 of Issue 6 of the 1COR Quarterly Medical Law Review (QMLR).

Law Pod UK is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Audioboom, Player FM,  ListenNotes, Podbean, iHeart, Radio Public, Deezer 
or wherever you listen to our podcasts.

Please remember to rate and review us if you like what you hear.

Human rights news and case-law roundup

17 August 2010 by Adam Wagner

Hoovering up the latest human rights news

We recently started adding links to interesting new articles and case-law on the right the sidebar under the heading “Selected news sources”.

As of last week, these articles now appear on our Twitter feed (@ukhumanrightsb) and Facebook fan page too. Below is a quick rundown of some of the most recent stories. The full list of links can be found here.

17 Aug | Privacy law to stop rise in gagging orders by judges – Telegraph: We have posted on the coming libel reform and super-injunctions; Lord Neuberger is leading a review which may, according to the Telegraph, lead to a statutory law of privacy. The Head of Legal Blog queries whether this would be any different from Article 8 of the ECHR in any case.

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