The legal battle over a privacy injunction surrounding a “well known” man could have cost up to £750,000 to date.
Mark Stephens, a media lawyer, says the cost of the privacy order will have spiralled past half a million as the complainant, named as PJS in documents, fights to keep the order in place.
Mr Stephens told the Independent an injunction can typically cost between £50,000 and £75,000, but this case has proved so costly because it has gone all the way to the Supreme Court.
“You make an application usually without notice of the other side, then you have a second go a couple of days later when the side can oppose if they wish to,” explains Mr Stephens. “For that whole process, it’s between £50,000 to £75,000.
“If it’s contested, they must have spent between half a million and £750,000 to get it up to the Supreme Court. On the enforcement side, they are working 24 hours a day with an enormous team."
The legal battle over the order has sparked a debate about whether the wealthy should be able to pay to gag the media when it comes to stories about their private life.
In a separate case, an injunction from 2011 is being discussed once again after a US publication named the actor protected from being identified by the order. The married British man is alleged to have paid £195 for a sexual encounter with Helen Woods, a former escort. The Sun were banned from naming him in reports of his alleged extramarital activity, but a later ruling allowed them to identify Ms Woods. Judges had ruled he had a right to expect that his alleged sexual encounter would remain private.
Mr Stephens says this order would have cost significantly less because it coincided with the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking when tabloids would not push as hard for the right to publish kiss-and-tell type stories.
“It would have been less at that time because they had a situation where they weren’t really being argued about."
