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F1: Mosley Wins Privacy Action Against Paper
Written by: Adam Cooper
RACER Magazine   http://www.racer.com/speedtv
07/24/2008 - 07:14 AM
London, UK
 
Mosley has been awarded $120k in damages. (LAT Photo) ยป More Photos

Max Mosley has won £60,000 – around $120,000 – in his privacy action against British tabloid newspaper, the News of the World. However, he failed to win an unprecedented award of punitive exemplary damages.

Mosley did not issue libel proceedings, but instead opted to sue the newspaper for an invasion of his privacy. During the proceedings he admitted that he had been a sadomasochist for 45 years, and said his behavior was “a perfectly harmless activity.”

In his judgment Mr Justice Eady said that Mosley said that he found no evidence of a Nazi link to the S&M bondage session the FIA president had engaged in with five prostitutes, despite the use of German language and accents, and prisoner/guard scenarios, and a reference by one of the girls to the “Aryan race.”

Eady said: “I found that there was no evidence that the gathering on March 28 2008 was intended to be an enactment of Nazi behavior or adoption of any of its attitudes. Nor was it in fact. I see no genuine basis at all for the suggestion that the participants mocked the victims of the Holocaust. There was bondage, beating and domination which seem to be typical of S&M behavior.

“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. Of course, I accept that such behavior is viewed by some people with distaste and moral disapproval, but in the light of modern rights-based jurisprudence that does not provide any justification for the intrusion on the personal privacy of the claimant.

“It has to be recognized that no amount of damages can fully compensate the claimant for the damage done. He is hardly exaggerating when he says that his life was ruined.”

The newspaper’s case suffered
because “Woman E” – the prostitute who did the filming, sold her story, and is married to a member of the British security services – refused to testify. The paper’s legal representative said it was due to her “emotional and mental state.” She was paid £12,500 ($25k) for her story, half the amount that she had originally been promised.

Early in the case Mosley had described the effect that the revelations had on his family.

“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 completely, totally devastating for her and there is nothing that I can say that can ever repair that. Also, for my two sons, I don’t think there is anything worse for a son than to see in a newspaper, particularly one like the News of the World, pictures of the kind they printed. I can think of nothing more undignified or humiliating than that. If I put myself in their position - to see my father in that position, I would find devastating.”

He also downplayed the violence involved in his hobby: “You have to understand that people who do this a lot become very sensitive and bleed very easily and the pain involved in that, compared to all sorts of things, is very modest. I’d far rather do that than jump into a cold swimming pool. The level of violence is minimal, the drawing of blood a little like cutting yourself shaving. When you think of piercings, tattoos - never mind violent sports - it’s laughable, absolutely laughable to say this is criminal wounding - fanciful and laughable.

“I fundamentally disagree with the suggestion that any of this is depraved, fundamentally disagree with the fact that it is immoral. I think it is a perfectly harmless activity provided it is between consenting adults who want to do it, are of sound mind, and it is in private.”
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