The High Court refused the Health Service Executive’s application to have its interlocutory injunction case against Neill Bradley heard in private, ruling on 5 June 2020 that the HSE had not established grounds for that exception to open justice.
Mr Justice O’Connor said the court would proceed to hear the application for interlocutory relief without restricting public attendance. He noted that narrower measures, such as anonymising or keeping private material concerning patients and others owed a duty of confidentiality, might be possible after the application was heard.
The ruling concerned only whether the interlocutory hearing should take place otherwise than in public. It did not decide the merits of the injunction application.
The judge referred to an earlier, ex parte hearing on 1 June in the intended proceedings. At that stage, the court had granted an order for that hearing to be held in private and limited the order to that day and the reporting of the order made that day. The judgment said the HSE had sought time to prevent the dissemination of historical data, citing threats attributed to Bradley in tweets. The HSE alleged that he had unlawfully accessed the data; the judgment records that technical steps had been taken after the breach of privacy was discovered.
For the 5 June application, the HSE submitted that a public hearing could put patients’ privacy at risk and alert people to material that might be online. Its counsel also argued that publicity could assist Bradley in carrying out threats. The judge acknowledged the HSE’s concerns about information that might be accessible, but said they could be addressed by framing and publishing the terms of any eventual order.
Mr Justice O’Connor said the constitutional requirement that justice be administered in public is fundamental, and exceptions must be strictly limited to what is necessary to protect competing interests. He concluded that the HSE had not met its burden to justify holding this interlocutory application in private.