LONDON — An English Premier League soccer player won a legal gag Wednesday against a topless model, preventing her from revealing details of their six-month affair — the latest in a string of similar cases involving high-profile people in the UK.
The married sportsman is using controversial human rights laws to prevent details of his adulterous relationship from being made public.
He joins more than 30 rich and famous people who have been granted the “gagging” orders to prevent reporting of their private life. Just last week it emerged that a major English actor had won a privacy injunction preventing the press naming him, after he allegedly cheated on his wife with a prostitute.
The secrecy orders override the traditional principle of open justice in favor of the right to privacy or to prevent the risk of harm to family members who may be embarrassed by the revelations, The (London) Times reported.
Politicians had pledged that human rights laws would not be used by the UK courts to introduce a legal right to privacy behind the back of parliament.
The player had been accused of having a six-month affair with Imogen Thomas, a glamor model who has appeared as a housemate in Channel 4’s “Big Brother” reality TV show.
Mr Justice Eady on Wednesday refused to allow the press or public to hear details of the legal cases that gags UK newspaper The Sun — owned, like The (London) Times and NewsCore, by News Corp. — the rest of the media and Thomas, 28.
Richard Spearman, QC, representing The Sun, urged the judge to follow the “principle of open justice,” arguing that legally binding orders would protect the identity of the player, who was not in court, while allowing publication of the important legal arguments.
Hugh Tomlinson, QC, representing the player, opposed the open hearing, saying the media “had behaved in an utterly irresponsible manner” in its reporting of the allegations. The press and public were ordered to leave the court less than 10 minutes into the two and a half hour hearing.
Max Clifford, the publicist who represents Thomas, criticized the growing willingness of judges to grant privacy orders to those with the means to pay for it.
“What we’ve got in this country now is a privacy law that wasn’t brought in by parliament but the judges have decided what they want and that’s what they’ve achieved,” he said.
“Sometimes the privacy of the rich and famous — or anyone — does deserve to be protected but only the rich can afford this so it’s purely a law to protect the rich and in a democracy that’s not right.”
Earlier this week Liberal Democrat lawmaker John Hemming launched an inquiry into the use of privacy injunctions, saying they were being “thrown around like confetti,” according to The Daily Mail.
