EF v AB & Ors (Practice and Procedure : Restricted Reporting Order)

EF and NP appeal against the refusal by a Judgment with Reasons sent to the parties on 14 August 2013 of an Employment Tribunal (the �ET�), Employment Judge Twiss and members, to include them within the terms of a permanent Restricted Reporting Order (�RRO�) made in relation to and following their determination of claims made by AB.� A permanent RRO was made in respect of four individuals.

EF was an individual Respondent to the ET proceedings brought by AB.� NP is his wife.� She was not a party to the proceedings nor did she give evidence at the hearing of the claims.� EF and NP were represented before me by Mr Peter Wallington QC, Mr Matthew Nicklin QC and Mr Julian Milford.� The Respondents failed to lodge Answers in the Employment Appeal Tribunal (�EAT�) and are debarred from taking part in the appeal.

As a result of AB�s threats to publish and promulgate allegations, text messages and photographs regarding sexual activities alleged to have been engaged in by EF and NP, in March 2012 EF sought and obtained an injunction in the High Court restraining such publication save as to enable AB to commence proceedings in the ET.� The hearings of the High Court proceedings took place in private, the parties were anonymised, access to the court file was restricted and orders preventing the identification of the parties were made.

AB served his Defence in the High Court proceedings on 16 April 2012.� The Defence alleged that there could be no reasonable expectation of privacy in texts and emails asserted by EF to be private as it was said inter alia that they were acts of sexual harassment.� It is said on behalf of EF that the Defence is based on the allegation that he sexually harassed AB.

EF made an application on 27 September 2012 to stay the High Court proceedings pending the decision of the ET given the overlap of the issues in the two sets of proceedings.� In October 2012 the High Court proceedings were stayed pending the outcome of the ET claims.� It is said that the Judge in the High Court proceedings considered that the outcome in the ET was likely to determine the privacy proceedings.