29 Facts About David Eady

Sir David Eady, KC was born on 24 March 1943 and is a retired High Court judge in England and Wales.

David Eady was called to the bar in 1966 and became a Queen's Counsel in 1983.

David Eady was a member of One Brick Court chambers and, as a lawyer, specialised in media law until he was appointed a High Court Judge on 21 April 1997.

David Eady represented Singapore politician Lee Kuan Yew in his libel suits against the late opposition politician Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam.

David Eady was unsuccessful in 1984 when he represented Derek Jameson in an action against the BBC over a critical profile of Jameson on Radio 4's Week Ending programme broadcast on 22 March 1980.

David Eady had advised his instructing solicitor Peter Carter-Ruck that the case was "high risk", but the advice had not been passed on to Jameson.

David Eady has a reputation for being distant and sometimes difficult in court, but can be immensely charming off duty.

David Eady cited the failure of actor Gorden Kaye in Kaye v Robertson to obtain legal remedies for alleged invasion of privacy as one of his concerns, saying that there was "a serious gap in the jurisprudence of any civilised society, if such a gross intrusion could happen without redress".

In June 2011, in an interview with legal journalist Joshua Rozenberg, David Eady explained that courts assessing issues related to privacy must apply the test used in Von Hannover v Germany, where the decisive factor is whether publication contributes to "a debate of general interest to society".

In 2003, David Eady presided over Alexander Vassiliev vs Frank Cass and Amazon.

David Eady ruled that Galloway had not been given a fair or reasonable opportunity to make inquiries or meaningful comment upon the documents before they were published.

In 2005, David Eady prevented author Niema Ash from revealing certain details about singer Loreena McKennitt on the grounds that they would violate her right to privacy as enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights.

In December 2006, David Eady granted an order to "[a] prominent figure in the sports world who had had an affair with another man's wife", preventing the betrayed husband from naming him in the media.

In 2009, the Law Lords overturned David Eady's ruling, with Lord Hoffmann accusing David Eady of being "hostile to the spirit of Reynolds", a reference to the public interest defence established in Reynolds v Times Newspapers Ltd.

In Khalid bin Mahfouz's so-called "libel tourism" case against US scholar Rachel Ehrenfeld, whose book Funding Evil documented allegations of Mahfouz's financial support of terrorism, David Eady entered a default judgment in favour of Mahfouz.

In 2009, David Eady issued a judgment that Google was not liable for defamatory content accessible through or cached by Google Search.

In June 2009, David Eady ruled that Richard Horton, a detective constable who wrote an anonymous blog called "NightJack", could be named, as he had "no reasonable expectation of privacy".

That same year, David Eady ruled in a libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association against science writer Simon Singh.

David Eady ruled this meant its claims were "deliberately false" and dishonest, not merely false or unsupported.

The court of appeal ruled that David Eady had "erred in his approach" and was inviting the court "to become an Orwellian ministry of truth".

Also in 2009, David Eady presided in a libel case media proprietor Richard Desmond brought and lost against investigative author Tom Bower, over a passing reference in Bower's 2006 book about Conrad Black.

David Eady gave judgment in a number of high-profile media trials, involving, among others, the singer Madonna; actor Josh Hartnett; chef Marco Pierre White; former secretary and mistress Sara Keays; journalists Roger Alton and Carol Sarler; and actress Sienna Miller.

On 23 May 2011, David Eady upheld the injunction in the High Court.

David Eady was repeatedly rebuked by the Court of Appeal for his conduct during the 2009 libel case involving Richard Desmond and Tom Bower.

David Eady disallowed several pieces of evidence against Desmond which the Appeal Court ruled were clearly relevant to the case.

The Court of Appeal judges ruled that David Eady's decision was "plainly wrong" and "might lead to a miscarriage of justice".

In December 2009, David Eady commented in The Guardian on some of this criticism, saying that "The media have nowhere to vent their frustrations other than through personal abuse of the particular judge who happens to have made the decision".

On 10 December 2009, David Eady granted Tiger Woods an injunction preventing the UK media from publishing further revelations about his private life.

At a previous hearing on 2 February 2011, David Eady had described the matter as "a straightforward and blatant blackmail case".