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Spycatcher and the press

01 July 1991

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The House of Lords has approved the bringing of criminal contempt of court proceedings against newspapers which published extracts of Spycatcher after the Attorney-General had obtained injunctions against other papers. They agreed that the newspapers concerned were not in breach of any injunction, since none had been made against them. But, drawing on old case law, they said that a criminal contempt was performed when someone did something with the intention of frustrating court proceedings brought against someone else. This means that in future the government will only have to take proceedings against one newspaper to shut them all up. Attorney-General v Times Newspapers, reported in 2 Weekly Law Reports 994 (April 1991)

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