Why super-injunctions don't happen in US

 

By Tom GeogheganBBC News, Washington DC

Injunctions are rare in the US legal system

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If European judges had ruled in favour of ex-Formula One boss Max Mosley, it could have increased the number of injunctions sought by famous people in the UK to stop details emerging about their private lives. A number of British celebrities have kept stories out of the papers using "super-injunctions", despite their names leaking on Twitter. But in the US, such action rarely happens. Why?

The super-injunction story that has made the news in the UK has barely registered in the land of celebrity culture, the US.

But where it has been picked up, there is some puzzlement about all the fuss.

The news and gossip website Gawker joked that the Twitter account at the centre of the story was "not very impressive" to Americans:

"Six tweets of entirely un-sourced rumours about celebrities we've never heard of. That's basically [rival website] TMZ on an off day."

While in the UK, the story has evolved into a debate about a "two-track" legal system - one for mainstream media and one for social media - in the US that debate rarely happens, because all media can get away with a lot more.

And injunctions? Forget it. Americans are bemused that famous people in the UK are able to stop the publication of details of their private lives, because it goes against one of their country's founding principles, free speech.

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Status update: I'm suing...

• Messages posted on social networking sites in the US are subject to the same libel laws as mainstream media (same in UK)
• But the anonymity afforded to some users makes prosecution more difficult (same in UK)
• There have been US cases brought in relation to statements made on Facebook, but removal of the offending statement is usually the end of it
• In the US, companies like Facebook that do not create content, but simply provide a forum, have not yet been subject to prosecution except where intellectual property rights are involved

The US has a booming industry in entertainment, gossip and celebrity publications, mainly based in New York and Los Angeles.

As well as Gawker, there is famed supermarket tabloid The National Enquirer - which once said a boy that was half-bat lived in New York subways - and the website TMZ, which told the world of the death of Michael Jackson. None of them need to worry much about injunctions.

The equivalent in the US would be something called prior restraint, but there are very few successful examples.

"The First Amendment of the US Constitution protects freedom of speech and courts are very, very reluctant to prohibit somebody from saying something," says Steven Wagner, a litigation lawyer at Wagner Davis in New York.

"So a prior restraint case against any form of speech is difficult to obtain in the US because of the constitutionally protected rights that grant freedom of speech." Continued