Legal News

In Two U.K. Cases, Invasion of Privacy and Libel Come at Steep Price

By Dan Slater

Plaintiff-friendly laws in Britain, the longtime home to “libel tourism,” are alive and well. This week, plaintiffs have won two sizable verdicts — one against a newspaper, the other against an individual.

In the latter, Mathew Firsht, the unwitting subject of a Facebook group titled “Has Mathew Firsht lied to you?”, as well as a profile containing false claims about his sexuality, religion and political views, was awarded $44,000 libel judgment from a former school friend who created the fake Facebook pages. Here’s the report from the FT.

We find the Firsht case interesting, but the big libel news out of London yesterday concerned Max Mosley, son of famed fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. Max, the 68 year-old head of the governing body for Formula One racing, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, cleaned house when England’s High Court ordered News of the World, Britain’s best-selling newspaper, to pay him about $120,000, plus cover his legal fees, which amounted to about $1 million. News of the World is owned by News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of WSJ.com.

Mosley sued the paper, which has a circulation of 3.2 million, for reporting in a March 30 article that he organized a “sick Nazi orgy” with five prostitutes, who acted out a prisoner-guard role-play wearing uniforms and speaking German. Here’s the WSJ story, and here’s a statement, published in News of the World, from editor Colin Myler.

(Life imitating art? Fans of Ian McEwan’s fiction might find parallels between the novel “Amsterdam” and the Mosley-Myler spat.)

Outside the courtroom Thursday, Mosley told journalists that the judgment “demonstrates that their Nazi lie was completely invented and had no justification.” In court, Mosley’s lawyers reportedly argued the European Convention on Human Rights gave him a right to privacy, and that the party had no Nazi overtones. Lawyers for News of the World argued the party had Nazi connotations, making it a matter of public interest because of Mosley’s high profile. High Court judge David Eady ruled that Mosley was entitled to privacy even though some people would regard his behavior with “distaste and moral disapproval.”

As for comparing the Firsht and Mosley cases, Ashley Hurst, a media lawyer who represented the defendant in the Firsht case, said “It is one thing for the News of the World to be ordered to pay Max Mosley £60,000. It is quite another for a private individual to be ordered to pay an ex-school friend £22,000, plus costs. That’s a big hit.”

Update: The Times of London is reporting that, on the heels of Mosley’s win, his lawyers are preparing a follow-on libel action against News of the World for reporting that Mosley took part in a “sick Nazi orgy” with five prostitutes.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 25, 2008 (boomark / email).