13 Apr Damages appeal in Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away! case

The Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away! privacy case is heading to the Court of Appeal on the issue of damages.

As previously reported in the Spring issue of zoom-in magazine, the Claimants, Mr Ali and his wife Mrs Aslam were awarded £10,000 each in damages for misuse of private information in relation to the broadcast by Channel 5 an episode of the programme, showing them being evicted from their home. The programme was shown 36 times, as well as being made available on demand, and in total was viewed 9.65 million times.

The Judge granted permission to appeal on three grounds, saying that they raised points of principle which were fit to be considered by the Court of Appeal. These were: (1) whether the damages awards were within the reasonable scope of the awards a court could properly make given the scale and nature of the publication and the distress caused, (2) whether the damages ought to have been (as the judge in his judgment said they were) reduced because of other publications, namely social media posts by the Claimants’ landlords; and (3) whether the damages awards ought to take into account distress caused to the Claimants by the adverse consequences of broadcast on their children.

zoom-in will report further as the case progresses.