Super Injunctions (FOI)

Produced by the Freedom of Information office
Authored by Government of Jersey on behalf of the Judicial Greffe and published on 17 July 2019.
Prepared internally, no external costs.

Request

Without releasing any specific details I would like to know how many Super Injunctions have been issued by the Jersey Royal Court over the past 20 years?

Response

We understand a Super Injunction to be an injunction which contains not only a directive preventing something being done but also a directive forbidding disclosure of the existence of the injunction itself.

The Judicial Greffe does not maintain a list of Super Injunctions or hold any record containing a count of such injunctions. To answer this Request would require the review of all injunctions issued over the last 20 years to establish whether they contained any directive forbidding the disclosure of the existence of the injunction itself. This would exceed the cost limit provided under Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 (the FOI Law) and the 12.5 hours maximum allowed under Regulation 2(1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014.

Further to the above, we think the information we would need to extract to answer this request is only available by virtue of being held in court information which is absolutely exempt under Article 24 of the FOI Law. In addition, if we had extracted the information, we think that releasing even the number of such Super Injunctions would increase the risk of disclosing the existence of particular injunctions. To disclose the existence of a Super Injunction would constitute or be punishable as a contempt of court. This means the information requested would be absolutely exempt under Article 29 paragraph (c) of the FOI Law. We therefore consider that even if we were able to collate the information requested within the cost limit, the information would be absolutely exempt under Articles 24 or Article 29 of the FOI Law.

Articles applied

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

Article 24 Court information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is held by a scheduled public authority only by virtue of being contained in a document –

(a) filed with, or otherwise placed in the custody of, a court; or

(b) served upon, or by, the scheduled public authority,

in proceedings in a particular cause or matter.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is held by a scheduled public authority only by virtue of being contained in a document created by –

(a) a court; or

(b) a member of the administrative staff of a court,

in proceedings in a particular cause or matter.

(3) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is held by a scheduled public authority only by virtue of being contained in a document –

(a) placed in the custody of; or

(b) created by,

a person conducting an inquiry or arbitration, for the purposes of the inquiry or arbitration.

(4) In this Article –

“arbitration” means arbitration to which Part 2 of the Arbitration (Jersey) Law 1998[6] applies;

“court” includes any tribunal in which legal proceedings may be brought;

“inquiry” means an inquiry or a hearing held under an enactment;

“proceedings in a particular cause or matter” includes an inquest or post-mortem examination.

Article 29 Other prohibitions or restrictions

Information is absolutely exempt information if the disclosure of the information by the scheduled public authority holding it –

(a) is prohibited by or under an enactment;

(b) is incompatible with a European Union or an international obligation that applies to Jersey; or

(c) would constitute or be punishable as a contempt of court.