A jury on Friday has awarded Roman Polanski the high-profile libel suit against Vanity Fair, ordering the magazine to pay 50,000 pounds in damages and a substantial portion of Polanski’s legal costs.The magazine had asserted that, in 1969, Polanski groped and sweet-talked a Scandinavian model, Beatte Telle, at a Manhattan restaurant, en route to the funeral of his wife Sharon Tate, who had just been murdered in California.“Many untruths have been published about me, most of which I have ignored, but the allegations printed in the July 2002 edition of Vanity Fair could not go unchallenged,” Polanski said in a statement.During the trial, Polanski testified from Paris via video link, worried, if he testified in Britain, that he would extradition to the United States on a long-standing charge of having had sex with a minor.Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair’s editor, said after the verdict, ‘‘I find it astonishing that a man who lives in France can be permitted to sue a magazine published in America in a British courtroom. And that he can do so without ever having to show up in person.’’ —NYT
