Handling the fallout from a workplace affair is a loveless task for managers that lawyers have made all the more complicated.

No one really feels sorry for BBC TV presenter Andrew Marr’s anguish over resorting to a superinjunction to gag the press from reporting his affair with a fellow journalist, but his case highlights the hypocrisy of couples who have affairs.

Rather than resort to a superinjunction, Marr and the many other entertainment and sporting figures who hide behind them, ought to man up to their infidelities.

It’s amazing that these people trot out excuses about the adverse effects publicity would have on their wife and children when they should have considered the consequences of their actions before leaping between the sheets.

Instead, they resort to asking colleagues to cover their indiscretions and in extreme cases for the wealthier lotharios, to law.

A similar scenario triggered a succession of recent high profile court cases in ETK v News Group [2011] EWCA Civ 439

The case concerns a married man, ETK, who is a well-known entertainer. He and his wife have two teenage children. Towards the end of 2009 he started an affair with a work colleague, X, who is also married.

Around six months later, ETK’s wife found out about the affair and confronted her husband. He ended the affair and they patched up their differences.

The episode soured the working relationship between ETK and Ms X, but they soldiered on until the end of last year when their employer dispensed of Ms X’s services.

She felt that the employer was siding with ETK and threatened action against the employer.

Somewhere along the line, newspapers picked up the story and ETK sought an injunction to stop them publishing on the grounds of the distress the story would cause his children.

The first judge disagreed and the case went to appeal, where his case was upheld.

Along the way, the judges remarked that work colleagues should reasonably be expected to treat their knowledge of the affair as confidential and disclosing the affair would be offensive.

The question is if a workplace affair becomes known to colleagues, why should the “disclosure” of such an affair necessarily be regarded as offensive?

If the affair is widely known, it is just as offensive for the couple’s families not to know what is going on.

That’s the dilemma for the manager – is a sexual relationship in the workplace treated the same as any other confidential internal business or not?

Workers want their affairs kept under wraps because they fear the consequences in their work and married relationships, like public image, separation, divorce and financial repercussions.

After thinking about number one, they may consider their partners and children.

Behind that comes the opinions of work colleagues, effects on morale and job performance.

This judgment does nothing to improve morals or ethics in the workplace but everything to reinforce the self-serving cowardice of the rich and famous to hide behind a veil of secrecy they do not deserve.

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