PPT v Independent Television News Limited & Anor

Facts

The claimant, identified by the cipher PPT, brought a claim in the Media & Communications List against two media organisations, Independent Television News Limited and Guardian News & Media Limited. Each had conducted a journalistic investigation into allegations about the claimant's conduct towards a number of individuals over a period of years, in a variety of professional and personal contexts. Before publication, each defendant notified the claimant of the substance of what it proposed to publish and invited his response. The claimant's case is that this notification, and the prospect of publication, caused a serious deterioration in his mental health, including serious attempts to take his own life and the need for psychiatric treatment. He broadly denies the allegations. Relying on medical evidence and on Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and, so far as necessary, Article 8, he seeks a final injunction restraining publication or broadcast of the information or substantially similar information. The defendants resist the claim, relying on Article 10 and the public interest in the publications. The claim has been expedited, with trial listed for 27 and 28 October 2026. On 5 October 2026 the court heard, in private, the claimant's applications for anonymity for himself and for the defendants, who had been given temporary ciphers in the meantime. This is the public judgment giving the reasons for the court's decision on those applications.