Tommy Sheridan secures £176,000 from News of the World publishers

Socialist politician Tommy Sheridan has succeeded in a legal bid to secure an extra £176,000 payment from the publishers of the now defunct News of the World.

Tommy Sherida. Picture: John Devlin

The former Scottish Socialist Party leader won a £200,000 defamation action against the newspaper in August 2006 after it published false allegations about his love life.

Last year, he instructed lawyer Gordon Dangerfield to go to the Court of Session in Edinburgh to argue that he was entitled to another £200,000 payment from News Group Newspapers.

Mr Dangerfield wanted judge Lord Turnbull to award the sum of be paid because journalists at the publication broke the law by hacking his mobile phone.

The solicitor advocate argued that the publishers of the paper should be punished for allowing its employees to use illegal methods to acquire information about Mr Sheridan.

He said his client, who was jailed in 2011 for committing perjury during the defamation action, had also committed wrong doing - but it was at “many levels below” the conduct of the News of the World.

Lord Turnbull - who criticised the “utterly reprehensible” conduct of the News of the World - refused to grant the extra payment to Sheridan.

Now civil appeal judges have overturned Lord Turnbull’s decision. This followed an appeal to the Inner House of the Court of Session by Mr Sheridan’s lawyers.

In a written judgement issued at the Court of Session on Tuesday, judges Lord Carloway, Lord Menzies and Lord Brodie, concluded their colleague misinterpreted the law surrounding payments.

The judgement tells of how the request for expenses followed a failed bid by the publishers of the News of the World to have a new defamation trial.

Lord Carloway wrote: “This analysis contains significant flaws. First, it was the defenders who initiated a motion for a new trial in the knowledge that this could delay payment and secondly, and most important, they failed in their attempt to have the jury’s verdict overturned.

“The fact that they were unsuccessful ought to have been the central feature of the Lord Ordinary’s thinking rather than the fact that the defenders had arguable grounds to pursue.

“It is not possible either to agree with the Lord Ordinary’s view that many would find it difficult to comprehend the inclusion in the verdict of a further £200,632 or £173,159.

“There is no difficulty at all in understanding that a person who is defamed and to whom a jury awarded £200,000 as damages for the effect on his reputation such as it may have been entitled to interest on that sum from on or about the date of the award until payment as compensation for the loss of use of that money.

“The short point here is that, if the Lord ordinary considered as he clearly did that the pursuer’s conduct was unreasonable or improper that could have been reflected in the award of expenses.”

Sheridan sued the News of the World for defamation after the paper published a story in 2004 alleging that he had cheated on his wife Gail with a woman called Fiona McGuire.

In 2006, a jury awarded him £200,000 after Sheridan described how the claims made by Ms McGuire detrimentally affected his reputation of being a family man.

The paper claimed that he was an adulterer who attended a swingers club. Sheridan denied ever doing these things.

However, in December 2010, Sheridan was convicted at the High Court in Glasgow of committing perjury during the defamation proceedings.

The jury found that he deliberately lied during the defamation case and that he actually visited the swingers club and had sex with nurse Katrine Trolle at the same time he was married to Gail.

During the defamation case, Sheridan, who sacked his lawyers, accused Ms Trolle of being a “conscious liar” when she said in evidence that she had sex with him.

Sheridan then returned to the Court of Session last year in a bid to have the News of the World’s publishers pay his client’s legal bill.

Mr Dangerfield also wanted the court to order that interest of eight per cent per year be applied on the £200,000 defamation award from year from the publication of the story in 2004 to May 2017. The lawyer said this would mean that News Group would owe his client another £200,632.

He said that the money should be paid out because of the News Of the World’s use of criminal methods.

This prompted Lord Turnbull to comment that Mr Sheridan had “something in common” with the News of the World.

During the proceedings, News Group’s advocate Roddy Dunlop QC said it could “be taken as read” that Sheridan’s phone was hacked.

But he argued that News Group shouldn’t be liable to pay the extra sum.

Lord Turnbull agreed.

But appeal judges overturned that decision.

Lord Carloway wrote: “The reclaiming motion will be allowed and the Lord Ordinary’s interlocutor of March 8 2018 recalled in so far as its refusal to award any interest.

“Quoad ultra the court will adhere to the Lord Ordinary’s interlocutor.

“Interest will run on the jury’s verdict at the judicial rate of eight per cent per annum from August 11 2006 until May 30 2017, the date when the defenders paid the principal sum.”