Interim injunction, privacy reframing and source protection:Cynthia Niruka Tooley v Times Media Ltd [2026] EWHC 675 (KB)

Introduction

In Cynthia Niruka Tooley v Times Media Ltd [2026] EWHC 675 (KB), Mrs Justice Steyn refused three interlocutory applications arising from an article published in The Times in February 2025 under the headline “Wife of anti-woke professor says she was ‘bullied’ by police”. The claimant sought to recast her application for interim restraint so that it would proceed primarily as a misuse of private information and breach of confidence claim rather than a defamation claim, and she also sought Norwich Pharmacal relief requiring the newspaper to identify the source from whom it had obtained a video recording.

The decision is important for two linked reasons. First, it shows the court looking beyond the formal causes of action pleaded and asking what the interim application is really designed to achieve. Where the substance of the complaint remains reputational, the claimant does not avoid the rule in Bonnard v Perryman simply by adding privacy and confidence labels. Secondly, it is a firm re-statement of the strength of journalistic source protection. A claimant who says she already knows the likely source, yet has not first taken the obvious step of asking that person, will struggle to establish the necessity required for Norwich Pharmacal relief against a media defendant.

Factual background

The article was published in print and online on 8 February 2025. One of its sources was a video recording made by the claimant two days earlier. At the start of the recording she said, “If you’re receiving this, you’re obviously a very close friend of mine.”

Nine months later the claimant sent a letter of claim alleging that the article contained false, misleading and defamatory statements which had caused serious reputational, emotional and financial harm. Although that letter referred to misuse of private information, it did so only in connection with photographs. The complaint against Times Media Ltd was, in substance and form, one of defamation and malicious falsehood.

On 18 November 2025 the defendant removed the reader comments from the online article. On 1 December 2025 the claimant issued proceedings. The original claim form was framed as a libel and malicious falsehood claim. It alleged fabricated quotations, misleading attributions and false descriptions said to give the impression of criminality, instability and hostility towards the police, and it sought damages not exceeding £150,000.

On 6 January 2026 the claimant applied for an interim injunction to restrain publication of what were described as defamatory articles and similar meanings. The draft order sought removal of the article, restraint against republication, continued disabling of comments and preservation of a broad range of editorial material. The application first came before Bright J on short notice and was adjourned because the defendant had not had adequate time to respond.

On 8 January 2026 the claimant issued a Norwich Pharmacal application seeking disclosure of the identity of the person who had supplied the recording to the newspaper. At a hearing before Heather Williams J on 13 January 2026, the claimant confirmed that her claim against Times Media Ltd was solely in defamation and malicious falsehood, whereas any claim against a third party would be in misuse of private information and/or breach of confidence.

That position later shifted. On 21 January 2026, before service of the claim form, the claimant filed an amended claim form adding misuse of private information and breach of confidence as the first two causes of action against Times Media Ltd, alongside defamation and malicious falsehood. On the same day she applied to amend both the injunction application and the Norwich Pharmacal application so as to state that relief was sought primarily for misuse of private information and breach of confidence, alternatively defamation.

The issues before the court

1. Whether the claimant should be permitted to amend the interim injunction application so that it was treated primarily as a privacy and confidence application rather than as an application to restrain alleged defamation.
2. Whether, on the facts of this case, the applicable threshold for interim relief was the section 12(3) Human Rights Act 1998 test or the stricter rule in Bonnard v Perryman.
3. Whether the claimant had shown an entitlement to interim injunctive relief against continued publication of the article.
4. Whether Norwich Pharmacal relief should be granted against the newspaper, notwithstanding section 10 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 and the strong protection given to confidential journalistic sources.

The court’s reasoning

The central question on the proposed amendment to the injunction application was not merely whether misuse of private information and breach of confidence had been pleaded. By the time of the hearing they had. The real question was what the application was truly about. Mrs Justice Steyn examined the course of the dispute as a whole. The original letter of claim was directed to alleged falsity, defamatory meaning and serious reputational harm. The original claim form was limited to defamation and malicious falsehood. The original injunction application sought to restrain publication of allegedly defamatory material. Even after the claimant began referring to private information, she had expressly confirmed before Heather Williams J that the claim against Times Media Ltd was brought only in defamation and malicious falsehood.

The judge did not accept that the later shift simply reflected a growing understanding by a litigant in person of the legal causes of action available. The claimant’s own documents showed that she was already aware of misuse of private information as a cause of action, but had not originally deployed it against the newspaper in relation to the article itself. The relief sought also mattered. The amended claim continued to seek substantial damages, a prominent apology and correction, and an injunction against publication of words or meanings to the same or similar effect. Those are features which point strongly to a reputational complaint.

Against that background, the judge held that the essential purpose of the injunction application was to protect reputation, not to protect private information. The application could not therefore be reframed so as to sidestep the defamation rule. The amendment was refused in relation to the injunction application, and the court proceeded on the footing that the stricter rule in Bonnard v Perryman applied.

Once that conclusion was reached, the injunction application faced serious difficulty. The judge first held that the draft order was in any event too wide. It sought removal of the entire article rather than particular words complained of. It also sought ongoing restraint in relation to reader comments that had already been removed, despite there being no evidence of any threat of republication, and it sought a preservation order without any apparent basis for supposing that the defendant would not comply with its ordinary obligations.

More fundamentally, the claimant had not shown a claim bound to succeed. She had not identified the words complained of in the particulars of claim or in the amended claim form, contrary to paragraph 4.1 of Practice Direction 53B. The defendant therefore addressed the statements identified in the letter of claim. The claimant’s pleaded meaning was that she had made false, exaggerated or irresponsible allegations against the police, damaging her honesty and credibility. The judge held that the statements relied on were not unarguably defamatory of the claimant. The article did not assert that the allegations attributed to her were false, exaggerated or irresponsible, and it was at least arguable that an ordinary reasonable reader would draw no such inference. On the face of the publication, any defamatory sting lay against the police rather than against the claimant.

The court further accepted that one of the statements relied on was, at least arguably, defensible as true in light of the contents of the claimant’s own recording. The video included complaints that four police officers had attended her home, that the police had taken her phone and laptop, and that she was being intimidated, bullied and harassed. That alone was sufficient to defeat interim relief in relation to one of the two principal statements relied on. The judge also observed that, if the claimant maintained reliance on other statements identified in the letter of claim, at least one of them was clearly defensible as true and another was at least arguable as not being defamatory of her.

Mrs Justice Steyn then considered the position on the alternative basis, namely what would have happened had the injunction application been permitted to proceed primarily as a privacy and confidence case. Even on that more favourable footing for the claimant, the application would still have failed. The breach of confidence claim was not more likely than not to succeed because it contained only a bare assertion that the recording had been communicated in circumstances importing an obligation of confidence, without pleading the facts and matters needed to establish that element.

The misuse of private information claim stood on a somewhat stronger footing at the first stage. Following ZXC v Bloomberg LP [2022] UKSC 5, information that a person who has not been charged is under criminal investigation will ordinarily attract a reasonable expectation of privacy. The judge accepted that this gave the claimant a realistic platform at stage one. But that did not decide the matter. At the balancing stage, the claimant had not shown that she was more likely than not to establish that her article 8 rights outweighed the defendant’s article 10 rights. The newspaper could rely on a public interest in reporting whether the police were being used as a tool to bully, harass or intimidate the claimant in the course of a high-profile dispute with her former husband.

Delay and the public domain also weighed heavily against relief. The article had been public for 11 months before the claimant first sought, or even intimated any intention to seek, an interim injunction. In addition, substantially the same information had already entered the public domain through a Family Court judgment in Tooley v Tooley. The judge regarded it as significant that, in those family proceedings, the claimant had not sought anonymisation or objected to publication of that judgment, having taken the view that the horse was already out of the stable.

The Norwich Pharmacal application failed for related but distinct reasons. The proposed amendment to that application was refused as unnecessary because, as originally framed, it already treated the alleged wrongdoing by the ultimate wrongdoer as misuse of private information and breach of confidence rather than defamation.

On the substance, the court accepted that some threshold requirements were met. It was arguable that the claimant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the information disclosed in the recording, that disclosure by a third party might amount to misuse of private information, and that Times Media Ltd was sufficiently mixed up in the alleged wrongdoing because it had received and used the recording. The real difficulties lay in necessity and discretion.

The claimant’s own case was that she had shared the recording only once, on a confidential basis, with a single institutional recipient. She said in terms that the newspaper could only have obtained the recording through unauthorised onward disclosure by that person. Yet she had not first taken the straightforward step of asking that person whether any onward disclosure had occurred and, if so, to whom. The court treated that as a less invasive alternative which had not been pursued. In those circumstances, it was not necessary to compel the newspaper to identify its source.

That conclusion carried particular force because the application was directed against a media defendant. Section 10 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 and article 10 give substantial protection to confidential journalistic sources. The judge re-stated the orthodox position that nothing less than necessity will justify overriding that protection. The claimant’s wish to obtain independent confirmation from the newspaper, in order to strengthen a prospective claim against the third party, fell far short of what was required. The court also considered that the underlying privacy and confidence claims against the third party could not, on the evidence before it, be described as especially strong.

The decision

All three applications were refused. The claimant was not permitted to amend the interim injunction application so that it proceeded primarily as a misuse of private information and breach of confidence claim. The interim injunction application itself was dismissed. The Norwich Pharmacal application was also refused, as was the amendment application in relation to it.

This was an interlocutory decision rather than a final determination of liability, but it carries practical significance for claimants, publishers and advisers dealing with mixed defamation and privacy disputes.

First, the court will scrutinise the substance of an interim restraint application rather than the labels attached to it. A claimant cannot usually escape the rigour of the defamation rule by adding privacy and confidence causes of action if the real complaint remains that a publication conveys a false and damaging account which injures reputation.

Secondly, pleading precision matters. The deficiencies identified under Practice Direction 53B were not technical irrelevancies. Failure clearly to identify the words complained of, or the information said to be private or confidential, can be fatal where urgent interim relief is sought.

Thirdly, delay is corrosive in publication injunction cases. A claimant who waits many months before seeking restraint will have difficulty establishing urgency, necessity and discretionary entitlement, especially where overlapping material is already in the public domain.

Fourthly, the judgment is a useful reminder of the limited role of Norwich Pharmacal relief against newspapers. Even where arguable wrongdoing is shown and the publisher is mixed up in it, the application will fail unless disclosure is truly necessary and there is no reasonable less intrusive alternative. Where a claimant has not first pursued the obvious route against the person whom she herself identifies as the likely source, section 10 protection will usually remain intact.

For practitioners, the decision is therefore a careful illustration of three recurring themes in media litigation: the continued force of Bonnard v Perryman, the importance of precise pleading under Practice Direction 53B, and the very high threshold that must be met before the court will order a publisher to identify a confidential source.

A separate judgment handed down on the same date in Cynthia Niruka Tooley v Associated Newspapers Limited and Telegraph Media Group Limited [2026] EWHC 683 (KB) dealt with related claims concerning the Daily Mail and Telegraph, including relief from sanctions, a limitation challenge, interim injunction applications and Norwich Pharmacal relief. Read together, the two decisions illustrate the court’s approach to late-issued defamation claims, attempts to obtain interlocutory restraint, and the heavy weight given to journalistic source protection in overlapping media litigation.

Further Reading

• Misuse of Private Information
• Misuse of Private Information Claims | Privacy Law Explained
• Malicious Falsehood in English Law
• Pre-Action Protocol for Media and Communications Claims
• Read v De Giovanni [2026] EWHC 243 (KB): Interim Injunction Refused

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