Footballer in sex scandal fails to keep anonymity

A Premiership footballer whose sexual exploits led to a landmark battle over press freedom is likely to lose his anonymity after the Court of Appeal ruled he had no right to privacy in two illicit affairs.

The player had stopped a Sunday newspaper printing "kiss and tell" details of his adulterous flings with a lap dancer and a teacher by arguing that the women had a duty of confidence.

But Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, quashed the ruling yesterday. He said allowing the footballer legal protection from exposure as an adulterer was an "unjustified interference" with press freedom.

The player was given three weeks to seek leave to appeal from the House of Lords but, if he fails, the Sunday People, which brought the action, will be free to name him.

The ruling will come as a blow to those who want a law of privacy that would allow celebrities to use the courts to stop media investigation of their private lives.

Lord Woolf, sitting at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, said a self-regulatory body such as the Press Complaints Commission, not the courts, should decide how stories were to be reported. The High Court is to rule soon on a complaint from the model Naomi Campbell about a newspaper photograph of her after a Narcotics Anonymous meeting.

Lord Woolf, the most senior judge in England and Wales, said a public figure had the right to a private life and for that privacy to be respected. But he added: "The individual, however, should recognise that because of his public position he must expect and accept that his or her actions will be more closely scrutinised by the media." The Sunday People had been ready to publish full details of the footballer's affairs – which took place between December 1999 and March 2001 – when the original injunction was obtained in April last year.

The women had contacted the newspaper after complaining that the player had initially claimed he was not married and had used his money, fame and influence to seduce them.

The footballer, who admits the affairs, sought an injunction banning publication on the basis that his wife and two children did not know of the affairs and there was no public interest in publication. A High Court judge, Mr Justice Jack, banned the two women from publishing "salacious details", saying they had a duty to keep the affairs private despite their casual nature.

The Court of Appeal found that the women had a right to reveal the affairs and were not bound by a duty of confidence as stringent as marriage. Lord Woolf, sitting with two other judges, said: "It is not self- evident how a well-known Premiership football player ... chooses to spend his time off the football field does not have a modicum of public interest." He added: "In our view, to grant an injunction would be an unjustified interference with the freedom of the press.

"Once it is accepted that the freedom of the press should prevail, then the form of reporting in the press is not a matter for the courts but for the Press Complaints Commission and the customers of the newspaper concerned."

The court was told the footballer, who was ordered to pay costs estimated at about £200,000, had met the lap dancer, named only as D, when drinking with team-mates. The woman said the pair became lovers for a period of 18 months. The second woman, C, a nursery teacher, met the player at a bar. The affair ended when she posted a transcript of a text message to the home of the player's parents and threatened to tell his wife.

Neil Wallis, the editor of the Sunday People, said: "Lord Woolf has said there is no privacy law ... the public interest is not something to be judged by judges or the broadsheets or the chattering classes. It is what interests the public."

He added: "If you seek publicity for yourself in glossy magazines, by doing that you are putting your private life in the public domain. Like your virginity, you cannot then claim it back again."