Kyle Walker: defender extraordinaire (on and off the pitch)

Sir Nicholas Mostyn analyses the England defender's courtroom strategies

This post was written by Sir Nicholas Mostyn. You can listen to the most recent episode of Law & Disorder above, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Kyle Walker is a legendary footballer - a defender of consummate skill, organisation and efficiency. In sharp contrast his domestic life is less ordered. He is married to Annie Kilner Walker with whom he has four children:  Roman (12), Riaan (8), Reign (6) and Rezon (3 months). Additionally, he has two further children from a non-cohabitative relationship with Lauryn Goodman: Kairo (4) and Kinara (1). The ages of the children alone demonstrate a degree of domestic instability.

Following the birth of Kairo Ms Goodman instituted a claim for child maintenance against Mr Walker under Schedule 1 to the Children Act 1989. Child maintenance in this context extends to the provision of housing during the child’s minority and meeting the infrastructural costs of the mother’s household.

That claim was adjudicated by Recorder Chandler QC. In his unpublished judgment he described Mr Walker as “a perfectly straightforward … [and] … an entirely truthful witness.” In contrast, the Recorder said of Ms Goodman: “I do not accept that she either tried or did give this court an honest and clear account.”

One might think, having suffered such criticism. that when Kinara was born Ms Goodman would pause before embarking on further litigation. But pause she did not and litigate she did.

She went to trial before Judge Hess. There were a host of issues between her and Mr Walker. She lost almost all of them.

Judge Hess decided that his judgment (Lauryn Goodman v Kyle Walker  [2024] EWFC 212 (B) (23 July 2024)) should be published without anonymisation or redaction. Everyone would be named, including all six children.

The judgment is a welcome, if extremely rare, example of the open justice principle being applied correctly in the Financial Remedies Court (a subdivision of the Family Court).

It was a routine case, heard in private, about maintenance for the parties’ daughter Kinara. As it was wholly about child maintenance it was covered by the Administration of Justice Act 1960, s.12. This prohibits "the publication of information relating to [the] proceedings". Case-law has defined the extent of that prohibition. In the absence of a specific reporting restriction order no more than the following can be reported about such a case:

(a)           that the proceedings relate to the maintenance of a minor;

(b)           the name, address or photograph of the minor;

(c)            the name, address or photograph of the other parties;

(d)           the date, time or place of the hearings;

(e)           the nature of the dispute in the proceedings;

(f)             anything which has been seen or heard by a person conducting himself lawfully in the public corridor or other public precincts outside the court in which the hearing in private is taking place; and

(g)           the text or summary of the whole or part of any order made in the proceedings.

Although such proceedings are held in private, rule 27.11 of the Family Procedure Rules has permitted since 2009 journalists and legal bloggers to attend and observe them. They may only be excluded where:

“…it is necessary in the interests of any child concerned in, or connected with, the proceedings; or for the safety or protection of a party, a witness in the proceedings, or a person connected with such a party or witness; or for the orderly conduct of the proceedings; or where justice would otherwise be impeded or prejudiced.”

There is nothing in the rules that says that in a case not covered by s.12 of the 1960 Act an attending journalist or blogger cannot report everything that he or she hears in court or indeed anything that either party may tell that journalist outside court. Yet in those in general financial remedy proceedings not covered by s12 of the 1960 Act, an inveterate practice has arisen of hearing the case in secret and of giving judgment anonymously, replete with redactions.

For those types of financial cases covered by s12, this practice is lawful and can readily be justified. It is of doubtful lawfulness (to put it mildly) where the financial remedy proceedings are not so covered.

It is a fundamental rule that such uncovered cases are not a special class to which the open justice principle does not apply. This was the essential, trenchant, reasoning of the House of Lords in Scott v Scott [1913] AC 417, possibly the most important family law decision ever made.

Open justice is a fundamental constitutional principle[1], “one of the most precious in our law”[2].  It exists to ensure that the judges are kept on the path of probity[3] and to keep litigants straight[4]. Derogations from the open justice principle can be justified only in exceptional circumstances when they are strictly necessary[5]. A reporting restriction order providing for anonymisation can be made only where it is strictly necessary and then only to that extent[6]. Before making a reporting restriction order, the court must carry out an intensely focussed (but appropriately succinct) exercise where the Article 8 rights to privacy claimed by the party seeking confidentiality are weighed against Article 6 (the right to a fair trial) and the Article 10 rights to freedom of expression claimed by another party, or by a third party[7].

Yet these fundamental principles are routinely ignored by the FRC. Their disregard is formalised, condoned and encouraged by Guidance from the President of the Family Division. In December  2023 he issued Guidance instituting a “Transparency Reporting Pilot for Financial Remedy Proceedings” in certain designated courts.

The Guidance said that where a journalist attends such a hearing the court will normally make a (surely ironically named) “transparency order” (in truth a swingeing reporting restriction order) which prohibits publication of the names and addresses of the parties  and their children and any photographs of them; the identity of any school attended by a child of the family; the identity of the employers, the name of the business or the place of work of any of the parties; the address of any real property owned by the parties; the identity of any account or investment held by the parties; the identity of any private company or partnership in which any party has an interest; and the name and address of any witness or of any other person referred to in the hearing save for an expert witness.

In other words, everything and anything of any journalistic interest.

That edict has been reinforced by further Guidance issued on 19 June 2024: Transparency in the Family Courts – Publication of Judgments. This states that a “reasonable starting point” is anonymisation of the parties and witnesses (other than expert witnesses) and redaction of much financial information as set out above.

Judge Hess had to navigate his way through these rocky waters. He recorded that

“at the outset of the hearing I received a request from three journalists – one from the Daily Mail, one from the Sun and one from the Press Association – to attend the hearing”

This betrays a curious ignorance of the right of journalists, extant for 15 years, to attend such hearings. The judge confirmed their right to attend the hearing.   

In his judgment Judge Hess said

“It is quite rare for a judge in a financial remedies case, in particular in a Children Act 1989, Schedule 1 case, and it is certainly quite rare for me, to reach a clear conclusion that (subject to the few targeted matters above) the normal confidentiality restrictions should be dispensed with and that my judgment should be publicly reported without redaction or anonymisation, but that is the conclusion which I have reached here.”

Here, the judge elides cases which are and are not covered by s12 of the 1960 Act. As explained above, a case thus covered would have the benefit of what he describes as “normal confidentiality restrictions”. But it is just plainly wrong to imply that such restrictions would or should be normally imposed in all other types of financial remedy proceedings following divorce. But, as explained above, this is the inveterate practice.

Judge Hess allowed his judgment to be reported warts and all. The only prohibitions imposed were in respect of the addresses of the individuals involved, the bank account details of the parties, and photographs showing the children’s faces. In so ordering he followed the submissions on behalf of Mr Walker and rejected those on behalf of Ms Goodman. Ms Goodman sought a blanket of secrecy to be imposed on the judgment, ostensibly to protect her children from harmful press intrusion.

Judge Hess’s essential reasoning was:

“It would be a nonsense, opening the court to ridicule, to try to redact or anonymise this judgment to prevent identification of the parties. Further, a perusal of the many hundreds of newspaper articles published about these matters clearly illustrates that the mother has not just cooperated with, but actively instigated, press coverage placing in the public domain her own children, the circumstances of their conceptions and what she thinks about the father. It sits ill for a person to come to court arguing for privacy for her children when, just a very short while earlier, she took a payment from the press to visit the European football championship with her son dressed in an England football shirt with the name ‘Daddy’ on the back, and to be willingly photographed doing this to provide journalistic fodder which the newspapers were only too happy to use. If the children suffer any harm from the publicity of these matters, it has already happened, and it will largely be the result of the mother’s own decisions and actions. For me, on the facts of this case, the balancing exercise must come down against the mother’s argument. For me, the right of the press to scrutinise and comment upon the court’s procedures and decisions, and what the mother has requested of the father and how he has responded, are on this occasion a greater priority.”

He added that given the repeated references to all six children in the press it would be quixotic to anonymise Kinara.

The ostensible grounds seeking secrecy advanced by Ms Goodman probably did not encompass all of her motives. Her wish to keep the case veiled in secrecy behind closed doors was not perhaps surprising given that the judge found Mr Walker to be “sensible, honest and reliable” while Ms Goodman was described as “not reliable, [who] often said what she thought would help her case rather than what was true.” One  can see that she would have preferred to have been kept secret the judge’s findings about her malicious attempts to destroy Mr Walker’s marriage and her extraordinary refusal to agree that the start of the case should be deferred by one day from its fixture in London on 15 July, being only a matter of hours after the ending of the Euro 2024 final in Berlin. In an astonishing letter her solicitor had written to the judge:

“There is no reason why Mr Walker cannot attend the final hearing. The competition will be over by Sunday evening, and he was well aware of the competition dates when this hearing was listed … He cannot now ask for what is essentially permission to celebrate or commiserate with his teammates. That is no reason to adjourn a hearing”.

If there were an award for misguided solicitors’ correspondence this would surely be a prime candidate for it.

In the raging controversy about the non-application of the open justice principle in financial remedy proceedings and the alleged wilful refusal by the current family judiciary even to try to understand the message of Scott v Scott, let alone to follow and apply it, this judgment is helpful, as far as it goes. But worryingly, I fear it may in fact operate to reinforce the entirely bogus “normal confidentiality restrictions” by impliedly suggesting that only celebrity status or proven delinquency will be recognised as exceptions to the norm.

That would be a most unfortunate consequence.

On 6 June 2024 Lucy Reed tweeted   when referring to my blog Multiplied Propagation

“Multiplied Propagation. The gauntlet remains where it was thrown down… he’s still right isn’t he? However much you wish he wasn’t”

I repeat the challenge. Let someone step up and prove me wrong with chapter and verse.

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[1] Practice Guidance on Interim Non-Disclosure Orders [2012] 1 WLR 1003 at [9]

[2] R(C) v Justice Secretary [2016] UKSC 2; [2016] 1 WLR 44 at [1]

[3] ibid

[4] Sir John Bigham P (later Lord Mersey) in evidence to the Gorell Royal Commission in 1910.

[5] Practice Guidance at [10]

[6] Practice Guidance at [12]

[7] Re S (A Child) (Identification: Restrictions on Publication) [2005] 1 AC 593 at [17] – [18]