Case No. ZC19D00073

may be present at the hearing, they are not permitted to report confidential and private information disclosed into the proceedings. It is fair to say, however, that there is some disagreement amongst judges and practitioners on this issue, and as a result the courts are not infrequently invited by the parties to financial remedy proceedings to make a reporting restrictions order.” 16.In financial remedy proceedings the starting point is one of privacy. This arises from a number of considerations including the fact that parties are obliged by rules of court to give full and frank disclosure of all relevant matters. But, further, the breakdown of a relationship and its consequences are intensely personal matters. For the public to be admitted, whether by attendance at a hearing or being able to read about it, would add a layer of pain and embarrassment which is damaging both to the parties and to their wider families. There is no corresponding public benefit. 17.On the other hand, what goes on in family courts is a proper matter of public concern. Open justice is part of the DNA of our constitution. There is a proper public interest in what goes on in the courtroom. 18.These tensions are normally resolved by the publication of anonymised judgments so that although the identity of the party is not revealed, the basis upon which the court has acted is fully visible to anyone interested. 19.One of the curiosities of our legal system is that cases conducted in the Court of Appeal are almost invariably held in public and fully reported with identities (save for anonymisation in children cases) when at first instance the cases have been heard in private. Although the media rely on the argument that if this case had been heard in the Court of Appeal no question of anonymisation would arise, I do not regard that as a relevant consideration. Parties who appear in the Court of Appeal know that their cases will be heard in public. Parties who appear in the Family Court know and expect their cases to be heard in private. 20.In rare cases the conduct of a litigant disentitles him or her from protection against publicity. The leading authority in this area remains Lykiardopulo v Lykiardopulo [2010] EWCA Civ 1315. That was a case in which the judge had found that members of a very wealthy Greek shipping family had conspired to manufacture for the purposes of the divorce financial hearing documents concerning H’s assets. It was a case of forgery and “plain perjury” where there had been a “conspiracy within the family to protect the family business which resulted in the presentation to the court of forged and backdated documents”. It was an extreme case involving an attempted perversion of justice. 21.The judge in that case (Baron J) had ordered publication of the judgment in an anonymised form. What emerged “went beyond anonymisation and involved the creation of a work of fiction”. The Court of Appeal held that the husband’s conduct had deprived him of the right to privacy and directed the publication of the judgment with correct identification. 22.The judgment of Thorpe LJ identifies the various alternatives open to the court when considering publication: i) Publication of a judgment in full; ii) A direction that there shall be no publication; iii) Publication with anonymisation; iv) Publication with redaction; v) Publication of a summary of the judgment. 23.In the occasional high-profile case anonymisation or redaction simply cannot protect the confidentiality of the parties. Thorpe LJ quoted the example of McCartney v Mills McCartney [2008] EWH 401 (Fam) where the choice was either to sanction or to refuse publication. It is agreed between all parties that anonymisation/redaction is not possible in this case if its purpose is to protect the identity of the parties. 24.I had been attracted to the idea of a summary of the judgment being made public. This is not a course that I or the parties know to have been taken in previous financial cases but that it exists as at least a possibility is made clear by paragraph 34 of Lykiardopulo which reads “if a case in advance and during its course has generated press interest and speculation the judge may release the judgment or a summary to the press (emphasis added) in such cases it is questionable what is gained by anonymisation. The identity of the family has been the generator”. 25.Neither party was enthusiastic about this suggestion, it being a middle course for which neither contended. I would have been minded to take it but for the fact that in giving this judgment I can incorporate into it the matters that would have appeared in a summary. 26.The key argument between the parties has been the extent to which H’s conduct in the litigation has deprived him of the right to confidentiality.