Jul 24, 2008 7:11 am US/Eastern
Formula One Boss Wins Lawsuit Over Orgy Claim
LONDON (AP) ―
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Motor racing boss Max Mosley won a closely watched privacy-invasion lawsuit Thursday over a British tabloid's claims he took part in a Nazi-themed orgy, and the judge ordered the newspaper to pay more than half a million dollars. (File)
AP
Motor racing boss Max Mosley won a closely watched privacy-invasion lawsuit Thursday over a British tabloid's claims he took part in a Nazi-themed orgy, and the judge ordered the newspaper to pay more than half a million dollars.
High Court judge David Eady ruled the News of the World must pay Mosley $120,000 in damages plus legal costs for the story claiming Mosley participated in a sadomasochistic sex romp with a Third Reich theme.
Mosley's legal costs are estimated at about $900,000.
Mosley, 68, admits the encounter with sex workers, but says it was private and there were no Nazi overtones.
"(The ruling exposed) the Nazi lie upon which the News of the World sought to justify their disgraceful intrusion into my private life," Mosley said in a statement. "I hope my case will help deter newspapers in the U.K. from pursuing this type of invasive and salacious journalism."
The "Nazi" issue was especially sensitive because Mosley is the son of the late Oswald Mosley, Britain's best-known fascist politician in the 1930s and a friend of Adolf Hitler.
The payout is large for a British privacy lawsuit, where damages awards are usually modest. But the judge did not award the "punitive and exemplary" damages Mosley had sought to deter other newspapers from running similar stories.
The judge ruled that Mosley "had a reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to sexual activities (albeit unconventional) carried on between consenting adults on private property."
He said he had found no evidence the orgy "was intended to be an enactment of Nazi behavior or adoption of any of its attitudes."
"I see no genuine basis at all for the suggestion that the participants mocked the victims of the Holocaust," Eady said in a written ruling.
During a weeklong hearing this month, the court heard evidence from Mosley and four of the women he met for sadomasochistic sessions at an apartment he rented for the purpose in London's affluent Chelsea neighborhood.
During the hearing, the court was played covertly recorded videos that showed Mosley being bound and whipped, then relaxing naked with a cup of tea. Some of the participants wore striped prison-style uniforms and one dominatrix wore a German Luftwaffe jacket.
Mosley told the court he had an interest in sadomasochism going back 45 years, but said he found the idea of Nazi sex fantasies abhorrent. He said he and the women acted out a German prison scenario, with no Nazi overtones.
After the News of the World story broke in March, Mosley faced calls to quit as president of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile, which oversees Formula One racing. Despite the pressure, he won a confidence vote last month allowing him to stay until his fourth term ends in October 2009.
Mosley said he planned to donate his damages award to the FIA Foundation, a road safety and environmental charity.
The judge said the damages payment aimed to compensate Mosley for the embarrassment the story caused, but was not intended "to inhib it serious investigative journalism into crime or wrongdoing, where the public interest is more genuinely engaged."
(© 2010 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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