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HXZ v NMX [2025] EWHC 697 (KB)
At 4.30pm on a Thursday afternoon, counsel for a dual nationality widower, who is chairman for a group of companies which trade worldwide, appeared before Ritchie J making an urgent application for an injunction to prevent a woman, who has “a large following on a particular social media platform” from publishing information and naked photographs of him on the internet.
The social media figure had already published one photograph of him on her bed, a few weeks earlier, on her social media pages. In that photograph he was eating breakfast, alongside text including allegations that he had an STD and had used prostitutes. She had further threatened him in an email with the fact that she had other photographs of him with genital warts. At another time, she had showed him an explicit video of himself in the washroom of her house, along with a photograph of him naked, both of which she had secretly taken and to which he said he had not consented. At that time, she threatened to publish these if he did not pay £1 million to her.
In the immediate run up to the application, she continued to threaten to publish the photographs and “the truth about his deceit and misconduct including presenting all documented evidence”, using the words of an email which she sent to his solicitor.
Ritchie J considered the matter through the lenses of misuse of private information and harassment.
The Court held that it “is plain from the written communications… that the Defendant has made ever increasing demands of money from the Defendant in writing, rising eventually to some millions, then falling down to hundreds of thousands, under various threats (1) to sue… (2) but also to publish and hence disclose his confidential, private information (including naked photos and his asserted medical conditions – which are denied) to his business colleagues, his family and the world.” The Court recognised the legitimate expectation of privacy in his information notwithstanding that some of the private information had entered the public domain already (citing PJS v News Group [2016] AC 1081 per Lord Mance at [25] – [31]), an injunction still serving a useful purpose to prevent repetition of known facts because the modern law of privacy is concerned not just with privacy but also intrusion (citing CTB v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2011] EWHC 1326 (QB) per Eady J at [23]).
Accordingly, Ritchie J granted the urgent interim prohibitory injunction “to maintain the status quo” until the return date.
A monthly data protection bulletin from the barristers at 5 Essex Chambers
The Data Brief is edited by Francesca Whitelaw KC, Aaron Moss and John Goss, barristers at 5 Essex Chambers, with contributions from the whole information law, data protection and AI Team.
