Weekly law digests

Confidential information

BVC v EWF [2019] EWHC 2506 (QB), [2019] All ER (D) 14 (Oct)

The claimant, a UK trained doctor, was from a country where homosexuality was illegal. He was bisexual and wished to keep his sexual lifestyle private. The Queen's Bench Division granted the claimant summary judgment for a permanent injunction to restrain the further misuse of his private information by the defendant, with whom he had had a homosexual relationship, and for an assessment of damages. The privacy claim arose from the publication, on a website which the defendant had created, of his account of his homosexual relationship with the claimant. The court held that the information which the defendant had disclosed, concerning the claimant's sexuality and sexual behaviour, among other things, was at the core of the values which were protected by Art 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, that the objective test was satisfied and that the claimant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the website information. Further, the court dismissed the claimant's application for summary judgment