Bloomberg LP – Court Ruling (United Kingdom, 2022)

The data subject (respondent) worked for a publicly listed company. The appellant is an international media organisation who obtained a confidential Letter of Request (LoR) sent by a UK law enforcement body (UKLEB) to a foreign state seeking legal assistance in criminal investigations against the data subject on corruption and conspiracy. The LoR contained confidential information about the UKLEB’s state of investigation on whether the data subject defrauded a publicly listed company. The appellant intended to publish an article with sensitive information from the LoR about the data subject's work for the company, the status of the criminal investigation and who and what were the targets of the UKLEB investigation. Before the publication, the appellant contacted the UKLEB and the data subject’s solicitor to inform them about their intentions. The UKLEB expressed concerns that the publication could seriously harm the investigations and advised the appellant not to proceed with the publication. The appellant ignored the warnings, and the article was published in 2016. Subsequently, the data subject was denied an interim injunction to prevent further publication on the grounds that the data subject’s right to privacy under Article 8 ECHR was outweighed by the appellant’s right to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR. The trial court later established that the factual basis for this decision was wrong, and the injunction should have been granted. At trial, the data subject claimed to have a reasonable expectation of privacy in information published in the Article and that the media organisation misused their private information by publishing the article. Applying the two-stage test summarised by Buxton LJ in McKennitt v Ash [2008] QB 73 (CA) to determine whether (1) the data subject has a reasonable expectation of privacy and (2) that expectation is outweighed by public interest, the trial court found that “there was a very clear public interest that the contents