A landmark Court of Appeal ruling, McKennitt v Ash, has confirmed that the press must tread carefully when revealing details about private lives of those who feature in their pages.

It comes after folk singer Loreena McKennitt successfully sued a former friend, Niema Ash, who wrote a book about McKennitt’s personal life.

At the High Court’s initial hearing, Mr Justice Eady ruled that in light of the right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the English law of confidence protected “even relatively trivial details” about an individual’s private life.

Imposing an injunction and awarding McKennitt £5,000 damages, he said: “To describe a person’s home, the décor, the layout, the state of cleanliness, or how the occupiers behave inside it, is generally regarded as unacceptable. To convey such details, without permission, to the general public is almost as objectionable as spying into the home with a long distance lens and publishing the resulting photographs.”

Media organisations, worried by the ramifications, submitted written representations in favour of free speech when the decision was appealed.

However, the Court of Appeal agreed with Eady J’s ‘long lens’ analogy, and upheld his ruling. In doing so, Lord Justice Buxton relied heavily on the pro-privacy decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the well-known case concerning paparazzi photographs of Princess Caroline of Monaco. (Von Hannover v Germany)

But what about Ash’s own right to freedom of expression? The Court of Appeal decided Eady J had correctly decided that her right had to yield to McKennitt’s privacy right in the circumstances.

Significant weight was given to the fact that, despite being known publicly, McKennitt always carefully guarded her privacy. Indeed, Ash conceded in her book that McKennitt protected her privacy “with the iron safeguard of a chastity belt”.

The Court of Appeal declined to follow an earlier ruling (A v B) giving the media wide freedom to reveal details of footballer Garry Flitcroft’s extra-marital affairs with two women.

The new pro-privacy landscape, so feared by the media, has now become clearer. It’s certainly a threat to ‘kiss-and-tell’ for the tabloids.

But whether people likely to feature in the regional press – MPs, public officials, local footballers, and so on – will take advantage of this new judicial thinking, only time will tell.