Gag Orders
Four hours exposure on Web no bar to Confidentiality injunction
Barclays applied for an injunction to restrain the Guardian from continued publication of documents it claimed were both confidential and privileged regarding its tax planning schemes. The documents had been leaked by a Barclays' employee and had been posted on the Guardian's website at about 10pm on 16 March. Barclays' lawyers got Mr Justice Ousley out of bed at around 2:30am on 17 March to give them an injunction forcing the Guardian to take down the documents from its website and refrain from any further publication and from directing its readers to other sites where the documents could be viewed. The Guardian failed in its attempts to discharge the injunction even though the documents were on the website for about four hours and were also still available on other websites such as Wikileaks.
Barclays Bank Plc v Guardian News and Media Limited [2009] EWHC 591 (QB), 19 March 2009
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