29 Nov 2024
Anonymity summons dismissed because claimant failed to discharge the burden of providing clear and cogent evidence of a psychiatric disorder or exceptional circumstances; open justice principle prevails and anonymity would prejudice respondents where substantive factual disputes exist; any derogation must be strictly necessary and was not shown.
2 Aug 2024
The court exercised its discretion to continue the Chabra Mareva injunction and the proprietary/worldwide Mareva injunctions against Madam Ding until trial or further order, but varied the asset disclosure deadline under the Mareva order to 7 August 2024 to avoid a real risk of contempt and to align with the London proceedings; the court lifted the confidentiality/anonymity orders as they were no longer justified following service of the writs; and granted leave to serve a concurrent writ out of jurisdiction on CFO Pan at the identified address in the PRC.
30 Apr 2024
The Anonymity Order was set aside because the claimant failed the high duty of full, frank and accurate disclosure in the ex‑parte application; significant adverse matters (selective omission of WhatsApp content, relevant passages of the Law Firm meeting note, and the claimant's authorship of anonymous emails and related threatened defamation proceedings) were objectively material to the court's weighing exercise and would have defeated or altered the need for an ex‑parte AO; medical reports grounded in untested subjective history were given little weight at this interlocutory stage; open jus…
22 Apr 2024
The anonymity applications were dismissed because the applicant failed to demonstrate objective, substantiated risk warranting departure from the open justice principle: there was no evidence of threats linked to the litigation, medical and Labour Department reports did not support claimed severe psychiatric incapacity, and subjective fear of employment consequences is insufficient to justify anonymity.
3 Jan 2024
The Anonymity Order must be continued because, on balancing open justice against the need to protect sensitive information, the risk that necessary evidence concerning the Client's mental capacity and family matters would become public, together with the need to preserve anonymisation made in related Foreign Proceedings and practical difficulties of partial openness, made restriction necessary to ensure justice in this case.
17 Nov 2023
The court continued the anonymity order because there was a serious question to be tried that the defendant accessed confidential material from the desktop and disseminated it, and because publication of the litigation would likely produce the very publicity and harm the plaintiffs seek to prevent such that lifting anonymity would jeopardise the administration of justice; the injunction alone was insufficient to prevent that risk and the anonymity restriction was minimally necessary.
19 Sept 2023
The defendant failed to discharge the burden of showing necessity for anonymity or for a gagging order because only general or remote risks of doxxing were demonstrated, none of the Concerned Officers had been shown to have been doxxed, statutory and injunctive protections exist (PDPO s64 and the Doxxing Injunction), and the officers' identities are directly relevant to testing credibility and the issues in the case; accordingly the anonymity and gagging orders were refused, the Replacement Summons dismissed as dependent on anonymity, and the defendant was ordered to file unredacted witness s…
31 Aug 2022
The President declined to order the proposed redactions at that hearing, adjourned the confidentiality application for the Commission to provide specific evidence and/or amend the Originating Notice, waived any procedural irregularity in timing of the application, and ordered that the confidentiality ring shall include the individual respondents and the directors of corporate respondents unless the Commission adduces credible, specific evidence justifying otherwise.
2 Aug 2022
The court held that s87A(2) of the Magistrates Ordinance, read in context and against its legislative history and relevant authorities, imposes a mandatory duty on a magistrate to order that the reporting restrictions in s87A(1) shall not apply upon an application by the accused; the Principal Magistrate lacked jurisdiction to exercise a discretion and his decision refusing to lift the restrictions was ultra vires and was quashed; mandamus was ordered directing the magistrate to make the lifting order when the applicant next appears.
4 Jun 2022
The respondent intentionally took three photographs inside the courtroom in breach of clear prohibitions; for this form of contempt basic intent to take the photographs together with the act was sufficient, the acts were inherently and factually likely to prejudice the administration of justice and did cause disruption, therefore the respondent is guilty of criminal contempt.