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Justin Rushbrooke
Profile
Justin Rushbrooke joined chambers in 1994 and is one of 5RB’s leading juniors. He is consistently listed as a Leading Junior (Band 1) in the ‘Chambers’ and ‘Legal 500’ directories, and was nominated for Junior of the Year (Defamation) in the Chambers 2009 Bar Awards. He has been involved in numerous high profile cases and some of the landmark decisions, at first instance, in the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords.
His claimant clients have included many well known figures from the worlds of entertainment, the media, sport and politics. Over the years he has acted both for and against nearly all the major newspaper groups. He specialises in defamation, media and entertainment law, in particular corporate libel claims and cases involving the Internet (including disclosure orders) and freezing injunctions; privacy and confidence; contempt; costs/CFAs; and contractual disputes.
He has been a lead author of one of the chapters in The Law of Privacy and The Media (OUP, 2002), and has often spoken and written on media-law related subjects. He is a member of the Bar Council’s working group on the civil litigation reforms currently being implemented by Lord Justice Jackson.
Landmark cases in which he has appeared include:
- Jameel v Wall Street Journal Europe (Reynolds privilege: acting for Mr Jameel at trial and in the Court of Appeal)
- Polanski v Condé Nast (evidence by VCF: acting for Mr Polanski in the House of Lords)
- Maccaba v Lichtenstein (acting for the defendant in the ‘indecent proposal’ slander trial, the longest in British legal history)
- Burstein v Times Newspapers (mitigation of damages: acting for the defendant at trial and in the Court of Appeal)
- Godfrey v Demon Internet (liability of ISPs: acting for the claimant)
- Berezovsky v Michaels & Forbes Inc. (jurisdiction: acting for the claimant in the House of Lords)
Other recent and notable cases include:
- Thornton v Telegraph Media Group Ltd (QB, CA pending)
- Pell v Express Newspapers (2009) (QB, CA)
- Tesco Stores Ltd v Guardian News & Media Ltd [2009] EMLR 5
Career
Called
1992 Called to the Bar
Education
Harrow School (Open Entrance Scholar)
Balliol College, Oxford University (Open Entrance Scholar in Classics); MA (degrees in Classics and Law)
Inns of Court School of Law; Bar Vocational Course
Areas of work
- Defamation
- Privacy and Confidence
- Data Protection
- Pre-publication Advice
- Contempt
- Copyright
- Harassment
- Human Rights
- Passing off
Verbatim
"not afraid to get really stuck into the detail - he’s a human computer" - Chambers & Partners, 2009 edition
"[one of] the best three juniors at the libel Bar” – The Legal 500, 2009 edition
Languages
French
Publications
(17 Oct 2002)