Celebrity injunction: Decision to overturn privacy order will go to Supreme Court

Justices will decide whether the man can launch a legal challenge on Thursday

London's supreme court (Getty)

Judges will allow a celebrity who wants to keep an injunction preventing a tabloid newspaper story being published to have his claim analysed by Supreme Court justices later this week.

The Sun on Sunday was hit by an injunction banning it from reporting on the celebrity's alleged “extra-marital activities” in January. The paper mounted a legal challenge against the decision and asked for the order to be overturned because the man and his spouse have already been named by publications in the US and Scotland and a political blogger. Judges at the Court of Appeal ruled in the newspaper’s favour on Monday.

The man, named in court documents as PJS, asked for permission to take his case to the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

PJS’s case will be heard by justices in the Supreme Court on Thursday, where they will decide whether he can launch a legal challenge, a spokesperson for the Court told the Press Association. The injunction barring the media from naming the individual will remain in place until then.

In January, Court of Appeal judges said identifying PJS and publishing the story would be “devastating” for him and would “generate a media storm” that would make their young children the subject of increased press attention.

But after ruling in the Sun on Sunday’s favour, Lord Justice Jackson said “knowledge of the relevant matters is now so widespread that confidentiality has probably been lost,” and the harm the injunction was designed to counter had already likely taken place.