The
FIA have confirmed that
Max Mosley has launched legal proceedings against the
News of the World, seeking ‘unlimited damages' for the front page exposé it printed about his private life last weekend.
The president of the sport's governing body had indicated his intention to sue the Sunday tabloid on the grounds of breach of privacy, and while not denying the allegations – that he had participated in a sado-masochistic orgy with five prostitutes close to his London home – he did dispute their accuracy, and vigorously insisted there had been no ‘Nazi connotations' to the five-hour, £2,500 experience as the paper suggested.
“It is against the law in most countries to publish details of a person's private life without good reason,” the 67-year-old – who is coming under mounting pressure from the sport's leading figures and car manufacturers to resign from his post – wrote earlier in the week in a letter to FIA members. “The publications by the
News of the World are a wholly unwarranted invasion of my privacy, and I intend to issue legal proceedings against the newspaper in the UK and other jurisdictions.”
Now, the FIA has revealed, a lawsuit has indeed been filed. Whilst there is no privacy law
per se in the UK, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights stipulates a right to respect for a person's ‘private and family life'.
“Lawyers representing Mr Mosley have today served proceedings against the
News of the World claiming unlimited damages,”
ITV.com quotes an FIA spokesman as having said in a statement on Friday.
