(795)  JK ROWLING PRIVACY APPEAL SUCCESSFUL

Since Scots Law News noted the first instance decision in the English case of Murray v Express Newspapers plc (since the locus delicti was a street in Edinburgh's Morningside – see No 667), it is here recorded for the sake of completeness that the Court of Appeal reversed on 7 May 2008 ([2008] EWCA Civ 446, http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2008/446.html).  The case arose from the publication of covertly taken photographs of well-known children's author J K Rowling walking with her family in the aforesaid Morningside street, but was brought in the name of the family's youngest member, David, 18 months old at the time of the photography.  The court held that David's privacy rights had been infringed.  The judgments are a further important contribution to the rapid development of English jurisprudence on the subject of privacy; meantime in Scotland we still await the coming of any judicial decisions at all on the matter apart from X v BBC 2005 SLT 796, although intrepid privacy correspondent Elspeth Reid advises that the case of Ferris v Scottish Daily Record, which is thought to involve privacy issues, is wending its procedural way through the Outer House Rolls and was put out to order by Lord Uist on 23 April.