Mootings'a Hooting

In this week's media law class, a moot took place concerning the law of breach of confidence (as mentioned in my previous post). What is a moot, you ask? Good question.

Mooting is the exercise of arguing imaginary cases/scenarios (almost like a legal debate) in the form of a mock trial. Just like in a real appeals trial, there it would consist of two sides; the plaintiff and the respondent. Both sides will have a senior and junior counsel, who address particular grounds of arguments.

Image courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moot_court

The facts of this scenario were as follows:

The plaintiff (my client), Terry Simms, is an actor of some limited fame. After being ‘killed off’ in a recent episode of West Enders, a popular serial on BBC television, Mr Simms had an idea for a television serial. The storyline revolved around a group of young clothes designers, struggling to hit the big time in the tough world of fashion. Mr Simms spoke to Janet Nye, a well known scriptwriter, hoping to interest her in the idea of turning his storyline into scripts. Nye took the idea to Frank Blyton, a producer of many well known television serials. On return, she told Simms that Blyton rejected the idea, saying that it would not have the mass appeal that is needed for a successful serial. Accepting that Nye’s expertise and Blyton’s verdict  was correct,  Simms thought no more about the script. Some time later, Channel Xstra, a digital channel, started to broadcast a daily ‘soap’ serial, called ‘A lines’ , starring several well known actors of repute. The storyline was almost identical to that discussed by Simms and Nye. The producer was Blyton. Simms sued Channel Xstra, Nye and Blyton for breach of confidence, alleging that Blyton knew that the idea was his (Simms’s) when he was approached by Nye. The court found that Channel Xstra were approached with the idea without knowledge that it was Simm’s and that no breach of confidence had occurred by Channel Xstra. Stepney J also held that it was in the public interest that mere ideas for serials (which had not been written down or developed yet to the full) should be in the public domain and not protected by the laws of confidence.

As senior counsel for the plaintiff, I was able to argue the first ground of our appeal - that Channel Xstra were bound by the laws of confidence regardless of the fact that they were a third party to the knowledge and did not know it had been imparted to Blyton in confidence.

The second ground, which my junior counsel (also known as my 'learned friend') argued was that there would be no public interest defence available to Channel Xstra in this situation.

Considering Channel Xstra were a third party to the information, it proved quite difficult in attempting to argue that they knew about this obligation of confidence prior to creating the show 'A Lines'. Instead, I argued that Channel Xstra ought to have known that in this type of scenario, confidence should have been attained, therefore a reasonable man would have been able to come to the same conclusion.

A further problem presented itself when it was established that none of my client's ideas had been written down, creating a lack of evidence to support our argument. There was nothing, therefore, to show that my client had even created these ideas in the first place. However, it was soon established that ideas do not always need to be written down and can be contained verbally.

Please excuse my bloopers!

The Dream Team