Cases

Ashworth Hospital Authority v MGN Ltd

Facts

The Defendant newspaper published an article about the Moors murderer Ian Brady, reporting the fact that he was on hunger strike in protest at having been transferred to another ward. The article disclosed details and extracts of his medical files which were held on the PACIS database of the Claimant Hospital. The newspaper had received the confidential documents from an intermediary who had received it from a source who was likely to be a member of staff of the Claimant. Ian Brady had himself put much of the information about his medical treatment in the public domain. An order was made by Rougier J ordering the disclosure of the identity of the intermediary who leaked the medical information on Ian Brady. MGN appealed against the order on the grounds that: (1) The information was not confidential in the sense that it was already in the public domain; (2) As Brady had caused the information to be in the public domain, the Defendant was not a tortfeasor in publishing the extracts.

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