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Mosley seeking tougher media privacy laws |
Following on from his High Court victory against the
News of the World over its front page exposé on his involvement in a sex scandal, Max Mosley is now bidding to see European media privacy laws strengthened to prevent similar cases from occurring in the future.
Mosley was awarded £60,000 in damages in July following Judge Mr Justice Eady's ruling that the FIA President had a 'reasonable expectation of privacy' regarding his private life [see separate story –
click here], after the tabloid newspaper had splashed the headline of 'F1 boss in sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers' across its front page back in late March.
Whilst acknowledging that he had indeed been present, Mosley denied from the outset that there had been any 'Nazi connotations' to the incident, and the
News of the World's argument on that point subsequently collapsed in court when one of its key witnesses failed to turn up. The 68-year-old had been unable to gain a prior injunction against the Sunday red-top publishing the story, as he had been unaware that the 'paper knew anything about it.
Mosley is now due to approach the European Court of Human Rights on Monday (6 October) in an effort to see newspapers obliged to notify individuals – be they either private or public – before publishing potentially highly damaging or hurtful articles about their private lives, international news agency
Reuters reveals.
“It has already been established in the High Court that Mr Mosley was the subject of an illegal and devastating invasion of his private life by the
News of the World,” his lawyer Dominic Crossley stated.
“The only effective remedy would have been to prevent the publication in the first place by means of an injunction – but because he did not know about the article beforehand, the opportunity of an injunction was not open to him.”
Crossley added that should Mosley's submission to the European Court prove successful, “everyone in the UK will equally share in the right to have an editor's decision to publish reviewed by a judge before irreparable damage can be done.”
