Campbell sued the newspaper, claiming that a February 2001 report about her attendance at Narcotics Anonymous meetings amounted to a breach of confidence and a violation of both the Human Rights Act and the Data Protection Act. The High Court accepted her arguments and ordered the Mirror to pay damages of £3,000. The newspaper appealed.
Delivering the judgement at the Court of Appeals yesterday, Lord Phillips accepted that celebrities’ private lives should not be “laid bare by the media.” It was crucial to the appeal, however, that Campbell had publicly denied having a drugs problem.
Lord Phillips ruled that, where a public figure chose to make untrue pronouncements about his or her private life, the press would normally be entitled to put the record straight.
Therefore, a journalism exemption in the Data Protection Act applied, and the newspaper was entitled to publish the report in the public interest.
The court reasoned that the story would not carry credibility without sufficient detail:
"We consider that the detail given, and indeed the photographs, were a legitimate, if not an essential, part of the journalistic package designed to demonstrate that Miss Campbell had been deceiving the public when she said she did not take drugs.
"Given that is was legitimate for the [newspaper] to publish the fact she was a drug addict and receiving treatment, it does not seem it was particularly significant to add the fact the treatment consisted of attendance at meetings of Narcotics Anonymous."
Finally, the decision found that the journalist had to be given reasonable latitude as to the manner in which that information was conveyed to the public or else his right to freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights would be “unnecessarily inhibited.”
Campbell will have to pay legal costs, estimated at up to £750,000.
