Motor racing boss Mosley wins pvt lawsuit

Motor racing boss Max Mosley won a closely watched privacy-invasion lawsuit on Thursday over a British tabloid’s...

Motor racing boss Max Mosley won a closely watched privacy-invasion lawsuit on Thursday over a British tabloid’s claims he took part in a Nazi-themed orgy, and the judge ordered the newspaper to pay over $1 million.

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.

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“(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 UK 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 behaviour or adoption of any of its attitudes.”