Michael Tugendhat

Sir Michael George Tugendhat (born 21 October 1944), styled The Hon. Mr Justice Tugendhat, and referred to as Tugendhat J in legal writing, is a retired High Court judge in England and Wales.

He won the Henry Fellowship to attend Yale Law School and studied at the Hague Academy of International Law before being called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1969.

He then joined Five Raymond Buildings, a set of barristers' chambers specialising in media and entertainment law.

Tugendhat was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1986.

He became a Recorder of the Crown Court in 1994 and a deputy judge sitting in the High Court of Justice in 1995.

In 2000, he became a judge sitting in the appeal courts of Jersey and Guernsey.

In 2000 Tugendhat acted for David and Victoria Beckham, who were petitioning the High Court to prevent the publication of a biography of them by Andrew Morton.

The Beckhams claimed a portion of the book was derived from confidential information passed on by their former bodyguard, who was already enjoined from making public disclosures about the couple.

Tugendhat called The Bodyguard's conduct "a very bad case of disloyalty and breach of confidentiality" but opposing counsel, Geoffrey Robertson QC, argued that Morton and his publisher enjoyed protection of their free speech in this regard.

The parties reached an out of court settlement and the book was published.

Douglas and Jones had sold rights to publish photographs of their 2000 wedding to celebrity news magazine OK!, but a paparazzo surreptitiously photographed the proceedings and sold his photographs to OK!'s competitor Hello.

Douglas, Jones, and OK! sued Hello's publisher, alleging their privacy had been invaded and claiming £1.75 million in damages.

Rejecting the claim that the couple's selling photos of their wedding rendered the event "not genuinely private", Tugendhat argued "If Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones could not offer a slice without offering the whole cake, then their own freedom of expression is diminished."

The Douglases were successful in their claim; Hello successfully appealed to the Court of Appeal.

The Douglases then appealed to the House of Lords which (in a combined ruling with OBG Ltd v Allan), denied the appeal.

In 2001 he represented The Sunday Times newspaper in its efforts to publish extracts from a book by former MI6 officer Richard Tomlinson.

The Attorney General sought to compel newspapers to gain the approval of the Government before publishing such sensitive information.

The court (Lord Phillips, Lord Justice Tuckey, and Lord Justice Longmore) ruled that, as the information had already been published in Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, it was already in the public domain and so restraint on publication in the UK could not be justified.

Later in 2001 he acted for a number of newspapers including The Times, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail, which sought to overturn a blanket ban on publishing unauthorised disclosures by former MI5 agents, including those of David Shayler.

The House of Lords ruled that the statutory prohibition on agents revealing secret information was proportionate and did not contravene Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Also in 2001 Tugendhat represented internet service provider Demon Internet, which sought to amend a ruling which would hold it responsible if any of its customers used the Demon service to identify the new identities of the killers of James Bulger.

The court amended the order to indemnify Demon and other ISPs providing they took "all reasonable steps" to remove the infringing material.

The order remained more onerous than Demon had wished – Tugendhat said of it "Happy would not be the word, but we have all signed it."

In 2002, in the case Theakston v Mirror Group Newspapers Ltd, he represented TV presenter Jamie Theakston, who sought to enjoin newspapers from publishing a story about Theakston visiting a London brothel, arguing that, as the alleged visit took place in private, The Sunday People's publication of details infringed his right to privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Refusing the application for the injunction, Mr Justice Ouseley said "It is not inherent in the nature of a brothel that all or anything that transpires within is confidential."

He was appointed a High Court Judge, Queen's Bench division, in April 2003.

In 2003 Tugendhat appeared for actors Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Douglas v Hello! Ltd before the High Court.

He was the High Court's senior media judge, taking over that role from Mr Justice Eady on 1 October 2010.

Michael Tugendhat is the son of Georg Tugendhat, an emigrant from Vienna, Austria, who founded a petrochemical refinery in Manchester, and his British wife Marie Littledale.

His elder brother is Lord Tugendhat, a Conservative politician, businessman, and author, while one of his sons is Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative MP.

Sir Michael is married and has four sons.

His father was from a Jewish family, and converted to Catholicism.

Tugendhat attended Ampleforth College and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied philosophy and classics.

In 2010 he was appointed to be the Judge in Charge of the Queen's Bench jury lists.

He is a fellow of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.

He was formerly on the management committee of the Advice on Individual Rights in Europe Centre.

Described by The Guardian as "Britain's leading expert on privacy law", Tugendhat told the Commons' select committee on Culture, Media and Sport:

"We must never underestimate the asset we have in the free press and I am afraid a free press is bound to be one that occasionally gets it wrong either by malice or mistake."

In January 2010, Tugendhat overturned a superinjunction imposed on the application of the footballer John Terry which prevented the media from revealing details of his affair with team-mate Wayne Bridge's former girlfriend, Vanessa Perroncel, saying he did not feel the order was "necessary or proportionate".

He also criticised Terry's lawyers for not notifying newspapers of the action they were taking.