Restaurant diner wins privacy case over picture

A taste for butterscotch tart is hardly the worst vice to be revealed by the press but one newspaper's accidental exposure of a customer at a Surrey café has earned it a rebuke from the Press Complaints Commission.

The PCC has upheld a complaint from Hugh Tunbridge of Dorking that publication of a photograph of him dining at Brown's café in the town's High Street was an invasion of his privacy. Mr Tunbridge and his companion appeared in a restaurant review in the Dorking and Leatherhead Advertiser above the apparently innocent caption: "Sumptuous: The cakes and scones were quite princely."

But Mr Tunbridge took exception to his picture appearing without his consent under the jokey headline: "Skullduggery over a butterscotch tart." He turned to the PCC, which ruled yesterday that although the case might appear trivial an important principle was stake.

Upholding the complaint, it said that although the café was a public place, Mr Tunbridge was not easily visible from the street and he had a right to expect to eat in such a quiet place without "surreptitious photographs" being taken.

The PCC's acting chairman, Professor Robert Pinker, said the ruling demonstrated the PCC was as concerned with protecting the common man as much as celebrities.

"The complaint from Mr Tunbridge ... underlines that intrusion into privacy – and the work of the commission in this area – is not just about the rich and famous.

"This was an important case, brought to us by somebody not before in the public eye, about his local newspaper, which has allowed us to continue building up our important body of privacy case law."

The PCC's director, Guy Black, said the courts had made it clear during privacy cases involving the model Naomi Campbell and the footballer Garry Flitcroft that they wanted the commission to set its own case law and Mr Tunbridge's complaint had given it the opportunity to do so.

"When we looked at the circumstances of this case we thought they had a reasonable expectation that they could eat their tea without finding their picture in a local newspaper," he said.

"It does not mean that under no circumstances can a picture ever be taken in a restaurant again. There are London restaurants where photographs are being taken all the time and people in those would not have a reasonable expectation of privacy."

But Barney Monihan, a solicitor with the media law firm David Price Solicitors and Advocates, said the ruling created as much doubt as it settled. "It does not provide a clear definition of what amounts to a private place so it is leaving photographers not knowing where they stand," he said.

Previous PCC cases which have addressed the distinction between public and private places include last year's ruling against Anna Ford.

The commission rejected the newsreader's claim that newspaper pictures of her on a beach in a bikini violated her privacy.