David Eady

Eady was educated at the Brentwood School, Essex, and graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge. ==Barrister==

Eady was a member of One Brick Court Chambers. He specialised in media law. The Daily Telegraph described him as "a leading courtroom defender of red-top journalism, much in demand as a barrister who could be relied on to uphold the freedom of the tabloids to expose the private lives of public figures." Examples include Eady's defence of The Sun when the Coronation Street actor Bill Roache sued over taunts that he was "boring". Eady was unsuccessful in 1984 when he represented Derek Jameson in an action against the BBC over a critical profile of Jameson on Radio 4's Week Ending programme broadcast on 22 March 1980. Eady had advised his instructing solicitor Peter Carter-Ruck that the case was "high risk", but the advice had not been passed on to Jameson. In the late 1980s, Eady was appointed to the Calcutt Committee, presided over by David Calcutt, which considered how to police the media. ==Judicial career==

As a judge, Eady was known for having judged many high-profile libel cases. According to The Times, Eady "has delivered a series of rulings that have bolstered privacy laws and encouraged libel tourism". One commentator said Eady "has interpreted the European Convention on Human Rights in a restrictive way. In effect he is developing a privacy law." Position on privacy Eady cited the failure of actor Gorden Kaye in Kaye v Robertson to obtain legal remedies for alleged invasion of privacy as one of his concerns, saying that there was "a serious gap in the jurisprudence of any civilised society, if such a gross intrusion could happen without redress". In June 2011, in an interview with legal journalist Joshua Rozenberg, Eady explained that courts assessing issues related to privacy must apply the test used in Von Hannover v Germany (2004), where the decisive factor is whether publication contributes to "a debate of general interest to society". Notable cases In 2003, Eady presided over Alexander Vassiliev vs Frank Cass and Amazon.com. In December 2004, Eady ruled in favour of politician George Galloway after The Daily Telegraph newspaper had reported that documents had been found by journalist David Blair in Baghdad that appeared to show that Galloway had received money from Saddam Hussein's regime. In its defence, the newspaper did not attempt to claim justification in that it was seeking to prove the truth of the defamatory reports. Instead, the paper sought to argue the public interest defence established in Reynolds v Times Newspapers Ltd. However, Eady did not accept this defence, saying the suggestion that Galloway was guilty of "treason", "in Saddam's pay" and of being "Saddam's little helper" caused him to conclude "the newspaper was not neutral but both embraced the allegations with relish and fervour and went on to embellish them". Eady also ruled that Galloway had not been given a fair or reasonable opportunity to make inquiries or meaningful comment upon the documents before they were published. In 2005, Eady prevented author Niema Ash from revealing certain details about singer Loreena McKennitt on the grounds that they would violate her right to privacy as enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights. Furthermore, Ash, as McKennitt's friend, owed the singer a duty of confidence. In 2008, Eady presided over Max Mosley v News Group Newspapers Limited, awarding Max Mosley damages of £60,000 for invasion of privacy after the News of the World exposed his participation in a sado-masochistic orgy. In 2009, Eady issued a judgment that Google was not liable for defamatory content accessible through or cached by Google Search. In June 2009, Eady ruled that Richard Horton, a detective constable who wrote an anonymous blog called "NightJack", could be named, as he had "no reasonable expectation of privacy". The blog was described as a "behind-the-scenes commentary on policing". That same year, Eady ruled in a libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) against science writer Simon Singh. Singh had said that the BCA "happily promotes bogus treatments". Eady ruled this meant its claims were "deliberately false" and dishonest, not merely false or unsupported. which he won in April 2010. The court of appeal ruled that Eady had "erred in his approach" and was inviting the court "to become an Orwellian ministry of truth". Also in 2009, Eady presided in a libel case media proprietor Richard Desmond brought and lost against investigative author Tom Bower, over a passing reference in Bower's 2006 book about Conrad Black. The case was notable for two crucial mid-trial appeals which Bower brought and won against Eady's rulings over the admissibility of certain evidence Bower wished to present. Eady also gave judgment in a number of high-profile media trials, involving, among others, the singer Madonna; actor Josh Hartnett; chef Marco Pierre White; former secretary and mistress Sara Keays; journalists Roger Alton and Carol Sarler; and actress Sienna Miller. In April and May 2011, Eady was the judge in CTB v News Group Newspapers. The case involved an anonymous Premier League footballer ("CTB") who had been involved in an alleged extra-marital relationship with model Imogen Thomas. Tweets and media coverage in the Scottish press named the footballer as Ryan Giggs. On 23 May 2011, Eady upheld the injunction in the High Court. Later the same day, MP John Hemming used parliamentary privilege to name Giggs in the House of Commons, effectively ending the injunction. On 15 December 2011, Eady accepted that Thomas had not attempted to blackmail the footballer known as "CTB" and suggested there was "no longer any point in maintaining the anonymity", however, the injunction preventing the naming of "CTB" nonetheless remained in place. Criticism Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre has been particularly critical of Eady. In a November 2008 article he accused the judge of "arrogant and amoral judgments", and went on to complain that Dacre was particularly critical of Eady's ruling in the Max Mosley case, describing it as a frightening example of what "one judge with a subjective and highly relativist moral sense can do ... with a stroke of his pen". The Daily Mail accused Eady of "moral and social nihilism" and "arrogance". After hearing the evidence, the jury found in favour of Bower. In December 2009, Eady commented in The Guardian on some of this criticism, saying that "The media have nowhere to vent their frustrations other than through personal abuse of the particular judge who happens to have made the decision". He added that he does not see libel tourism as a problem: "I believe the suggestion is that there is a large queue of people, loosely classified as 'foreigners', waiting to clog up our courts with libel actions that are without merit and which have nothing to do with our jurisdiction ... [This] is not a phenomenon we actually come across in our daily lives." Foreign media, including The Irish Times, ignored the terms of the UK injunction and published its details. In April 2011, Eady faced press criticism following a case in which he granted a restraining order contra mundum ("against the world") in OPQ v BJM, creating a worldwide and permanent ban on publication of details about an individual's private life. At a previous hearing on 2 February 2011, Eady had described the matter as "a straightforward and blatant blackmail case". ==See also==