Patient's medical records passed to newspaper - jurisdiction to order journalist to disclose source - necessary in interests of justiceAshworth Hospital Authority v MGN Ltd: CA (Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers MR, May and Laws LJJ):18 December 2000An unidentified employee of a secure hospital, in breach of confidence and breach of contract, supplied to an intermediary 17 pages of confidential hospital medical records relating to a secure patient, a convicted murderer who was detained in custody at the hospital.

The patient was on hunger strike and conducting a media campaign about his treatment.

The information was more detailed than that put into the public domain by the patient.

The intermediary passed the information to a journalist who wrote an article containing verbatim extracts from the information which was published in the defendants' newspaper.Both the intermediary and the defendants knew that the information was supplied in breach of confidence.

The hospital were unable to identify the source.

The judge made an order that the defendants identify the intermediary, as a way of identifying the source.

The defendants appealed on the ground that the judge had no jurisdiction to make the order and that it offended against s.10 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 and art.10 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1953).

The appeal was heard after the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force.Desmond Browne QC and Richard Parkes (instructed by Swepstone Walsh) for the defendant.

Nigel Pleming QC and Vincent Nelson (instructed by Reid Minty) for the hospital.Held, dismissing the appeal, that a court had jurisdiction to order disclosure of the identity of wrongdoers where the person against whom disclosure was sought had become mixed up in wrongful conduct which, though not tortious, infringed a claimant's legal rights; that even if the jurisdiction arose only in the case of tortious conduct, disclosure could still be ordered where the defendant was a party to the wrongdoing; that the judge therefore had jurisdiction to make the order; that disclosure was necessary in the interests of justice within s.10 of the 1981 Act and came within the legitimate aims in art.10 of the Convention; that the case was an exceptional one where the disclosure of confidential medical records to the press was not only misconduct of concern to the hospital but an attack on an area of confidentiality which ought to be safeguarded in any democratic society; and that in those circumstance the public interest in discovering the wrongdoer overrode the public interest in the protection of journalists' confidential sources.