Claimant firm Leigh Day has been praised by the High Court over its suggested warning to clients about the importance of court embargoes, after a client shared a judgment ahead of hand-down.
In Wild Justice and Badger Trust v Natural England, Mr Justice Fordham promotes the ‘vital message’ that court embargoes must be respected. In bold, capital letters under the subheading of ‘getting the message across’ the judgment states: ‘THE COURT EMBARGO IS FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT FROM A JOURNALISM EMBARGO.’
In the breach, animal welfare group the Badger Trust circulated a press release to 85 journalists four minutes ahead of the scheduled hand-down of a JR ruling concerning badger cull licences.
According to the judgment, the breach occurred because of a miscommunication between the trust's chair and chief executive.
Legal representative, Leigh Day, acted with 'complete propriety', the judge said. Its senior environmental solicitor Carol Day had emphasised the importance of the embargo and warned that a press release could not be sent to journalists, even under embargo, until confirmation that the judgment had been handed down.
Leigh Day’s ‘practical’ and ‘commendable’ suggestion of ‘specifically explain[ing] the meaning of a legal embargo and how it differs from a press embargo’ and doing so more than once were complimented by the judge.
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‘It is important to maximise the efforts to curtail what has been a recurring problem about what the court embargo is and is not,’ the judge said.
The judge added that communicating the outcome or content of an upcoming judgment to anyone, including the press, is not permissible ahead of receipt of the final handed-down judgment. It is a ‘breach of a duty imposed by the court and owed to the court’.
‘It is significant,’ he added. ‘It can also be a contempt of court. The court will always investigate it fully, and treat it very seriously.’
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