Max Mosley 'orgy' ruling: Press 'less free' after judge's verdict

Published on 24/07/2008 21:56

FORMULA 1 boss Max Mosley won £60,000 in damages from the News of the World yesterday in a decision experts warned could have far-reaching implications for privacy issues.

The newspaper faces a total legal bill of about 850,000 following the judgment, which its editor claimed was further evidence investigative journalism was being "strangled by stealth".

Mr Mosley was awarded the record pay-out after the judge ruled the newspaper's "sick Nazi orgy" story was not in the public interest.

Mr Justice Eady said Mr Mosley could expect "privacy in relation to sexual activities, albeit unconventional, carried on between consenting adults on private property".

He also said there was "no evidence" the sadomasochistic orgies in which Mr Mosley took part with five prostitutes had any Nazi themes. The tabloid had claimed the orgy it reported and secretly recorded in March this year had been deliberately designed to be a Nazi-style occasion, with Mr Mosley posing as a concentration camp prisoner and the women in the role of guards.

But the judge said there was "no genuine basis" for the suggestion Holocaust victims had been mocked.

Outside court, Mr Mosley said: "I am delighted with a judgment which is devastating for the News of the World. It demonstrates that their Nazi lie was a complete invention with no justification.

"It also shows they had no right to go into private premises and take pictures and film adults engaged in activities which are no-one's business but their own to know. I am very pleased with this result."

In his ruling, Mr Justice Eady said the newspaper could not claim it was acting in the public interest. "There was bondage, beating and domination, which seem to be typical of S&M behaviour," he said. "But there was no public interest or other justification for the clandestine recording, for the publication of the resulting information and still photographs, or for the placing of the video extracts on the News of the World website – all of this on a massive scale."

But he did not give Mr Mosley, 68, the unprecedented award of punitive – rather than compensatory – damages he had sought.

The judge said: "It is perhaps worth adding that there is nothing 'landmark' about this decision. It is simply the application to rather unusual facts of recently developed but established principles."

Colin Myler, the editor of the News of the World, defended his decision to publish and said the press would be "less free" following the judgment.

Media lawyers tended to agree. Sarah Webb, head of defamation at Russell Jones & Walker, said: "This decision is an enormous boost to the law of privacy. It means it is going to be almost impossible for the media to publish anything that touches on the fundamental aspects of a person's private life, such as their family life, sexual behaviour, orientation or medical conditions, and show that such publication is in the public interest."

Mark Stephens, of law firm Finers Stephens Innocent, said: "I think the spanking Mosley has given the News of the World will clamp the rest of the investigative media – the legitimate investigative media – in chains."

BACKGROUND

THE court heard explicit details of the encounter on 28 March between Max Mosley and five women – known as A, B, C, D, and E – in a Chelsea flat the F1 boss had rented.

Described by A as "hugely sexy", the five-hour role-play session began when E chained up a naked Mosley and, along with A, performed a lice inspection on him before verbally insulting the 68-year-old and shaving his buttocks.

Later, A birched Mosley and caned him, leaving him requiring a plaster on his bottom.

After a break, Mosley punished A, C, and D with a strap, while speaking German to B and E, who were dressed in military uniforms.

They then performed sex acts on each other before having a drink and leaving.

ANALYSIS: Wife of 48 years 'devastated' by sex revelations

THE one person seldom mentioned throughout Max Mosley's High Court case arguably suffered the greatest damage from its candid revelations – his wife, Jean.

Married to the F1 boss for 48 years, she knew nothing of her husband's unusual sexual inclinations until the News of the World deemed them worthy of its front page.

It was, Mr Mosley told the court, "totally devastating for her" when she read about his penchant for sadomasochistic sex with prostitutes. He said the expos "had more of an effect on my family than on me".

He added: "My wife and I have been married for 48 years and together for more than 50 – we met as teenagers – and she never knew of this aspect of my life, so that headline in the newspaper was totally devastating for her and there is nothing I can say that can ever repair that."

Whatever pain she has suffered, Mrs Mosley has not spoken out since the publication of the story, nor has she attended court.

Even before her husband's inclinations were made public, she coveted a low profile, spending most of her time at their home in Monaco, and occasionally staying at their mews house in Chelsea.

Even during F1 races and social events, Mrs Mosley rarely made an appearance.

The daughter of a policeman from Streatham, she met Mosley at a party in London in 1959. They became engaged in June 1960 and married less than four weeks later. At the time, Mosley was reading physics at Oxford, and had not yet decided what he would do for a living.

When Jean was given tickets for a motor race at Silverstone, she took her husband along and he became hooked on the sport.