Law firm escapes sanction for breaching judgment embargo
A media manager at Fieldfisher sent a confidential embargoed draft judgment and quotes to the BBC, ITV, The Guardian and other journalists before it was handed down, and began preparing internal marketing. She informed a partner at the firm about this but the partner, an experienced solicitor whose practice did not tend to encounter embargoed judgments, believed internal marketing preparations were allowed pre-embargo.
R (on the application of Glaister and Carr) v Assistant Coroner for North Wales [2025] EWHC 1018 (Admin) has ‘at its heart a vital distinction between a court embargo and a journalism embargo’, Mr Justice Fordham said. The media manager, a non-lawyer with a media background, had understood the embargo in the journalistic sense of information being disclosed on the understanding that nothing be published or broadcast before the embargo.
Fordham J said all breaches of the court embargo were ‘significant and matters of concern’. However, there ‘is a strong public interest in a full and fearless enquiry, with comprehensive and candid disclosure.
‘The process is burdensome and exacting. The issuing of a public domain judgment like this one serves the public interest, recognises why all of this matters, and is a public record of breaches, shortcomings and concerns’.
He said he accepted the evidence and apologies and saw no risk of repetition. Therefore, further steps were ‘neither necessary nor proportionate. The primary purpose of contempt proceedings—to secure compliance with the court embargo—stands achieved’.
Three years ago, the Master of the Rolls, Sir Geoffrey Vos warned that ‘in future, those who break embargoes can expect to find themselves the subject of contempt proceedings’, in R (on the application of Counsel General for Wales) v Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy [2022] EWCA Civ 181.
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