Celebrity injunction: Privacy order protecting couple lifted by Court of Appeal

The couple is now expected to lodge an appeal

Judges have lifted a privacy order (AFP/Getty Images)

An injunction barring a tabloid newspaper from naming a celebrity said to have engaged in “extramarital activities” can be lifted, judges have ruled, but they have not named the man involved, who is now expected to ask for a stay pending further legal action.

In January, judges at London’s Court of Appeal granted an injunction barring The Sun on Sunday and other media outlets from printing details about a “three-way sexual encounter” involving a man named in court papers as PJS.

Lawyers for the newspaper returned to court to ask judges to review the Court of Appeal’s decision on Friday and three judges decided to lift it today.

However, PJS still cannot be named pending legal action from him and the story cannot be published until an appeal has been heard. His lawyers are asking for permission to take the case to the Supreme Court.

In their initial ruling granting the privacy order, judges said identifying the man and his partner and publishing the story would be “devastating” for him and would “generate a media storm”, which would, in turn, make their young children the subject of increased media attention.

“There would be increased press interest in the claimant's and YMA's family life,” the ruling said. “The children would become the subject of increased press attention, with all that that entails. Furthermore, even if the children do not suffer harassment in the short-term, they are bound to learn about these matters from school friends and the internet in due course.”

Lawyers representing the Sun on Sunday had asked for the injunction to be lifted because the man - who is described as being in the entertainment business and in a relationship with someone who is also a well-known individual in the same business - has been named by publications in the US, Scotland and other countries. The injunction only applies in England and Wales.

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The injunction was the first to reach the Court of Appeal for five years.

Additional reporting by Press Association