UK: Motor racing boss Max Mosley won damages in London's high court yesterday when a judge ruled his privacy was violated after the News of the Worldpublished a story about his part in a sado-masochistic orgy.
Mr Mosley, president of Formula One's governing body and son of Britain's 1930s Fascist leader Oswald Mosley, did not deny taking part in a German-themed sex session with prostitutes, but said his privacy was violated by the newspaper's reporting.
Justice David Eady sided with Mr Mosley, saying the tabloid newspaper was not justified in publishing the story and accompanying photographs despite Mr Mosley's public profile and claims that it was in the public interest.
In the story, published earlier this year, the newspaper said the orgy involved Nazi-style role-play, something Mr Mosley denied and the newspaper failed to back up in court.
"The claimant had a reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to sexual activities (albeit unconventional) carried on between consenting adults on private property," Justice Eady wrote in his judgment. "I found that there was no evidence that the gathering on 28th March, 2008 was intended to be an enactment of Nazi behaviour or adoption of any of its attitudes. Nor was it in fact." The judge awarded Mosley £60,000 in damages and said the newspaper should pay his costs, estimated at £450,000.
Mr Mosley (68) brought the case earlier this month, saying the newspaper, which published pictures showing the Formula One boss being spanked by women dressed as prison guards, was responsible for a "gross and indefensible intrusion of his private life". The News of the Worldsaid the sex session was an example of "true depravity" not just harmless "hanky spanky".
Giving evidence during the case, Mr Mosley confessed to having had a penchant for sado-masochism from an early age, but dismissed any suggestion of a Nazi fetish or that there were any Nazi connotations. He said he could think of few things more unerotic given his family history.
Mr Mosley welcomed the judge's ruling, saying: "This shows that they have no right to go into private premises and take pictures and films of adults engaged in activities that are no one's business but those of the people concerned."
The newspaper's case rested heavily on the evidence of a star witness, a prostitute married to a former British MI5 agent, who filmed the sex session secretly and was expected to claim that Mr Mosley had explicitly requested a Nazi-themed orgy.
However, she failed to appear in court to give evidence and the other four prostitutes involved denied any Nazi connotation.
"They over-larded the story, and if you over-lard the story and get it wrong . . . you've got a real problem," privacy lawyer Rod Dadak told the BBC.
- (Reuters)