Mosley Wins Privacy Suit over 'Nazi' S&M Orgy

Formula 1 boss wins $120,000 in damages against tabloid
By Jason Farago,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 24, 2008 6:09 AM CDT
Mosley Wins Privacy Suit over 'Nazi' S&M Orgy
Motor racing boss Max Mosley, center, leaves the Royal Courts of Justice, after winning a privacy-invasion lawsuit over a British tabloid's claims he took part in a Nazi-themed orgy, in London, Thursday, July, 24, 2008.   (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Max Mosley has won his lawsuit against a British tabloid for exposing a sadomasochistic orgy he took part in and falsely claiming it had Nazi overtones, reports the Guardian. In a landmark decision, the head of world motorsport was awarded $120,000 in damages—thought to be a record in a British privacy case—from the News of the World, owned by Rupert Murdoch.

The tabloid based its story on a video that one of the five prostitutes took with a hidden camera, and then posted the footage online. But the judge ruled that "there was no public interest or other justification for the clandestine recording," which he said "ruined" Mosley's life, and he found no evidence that the orgy had a Nazi theme. "I see no genuine basis at all for the suggestion that the participants mocked the victims of the Holocaust," he wrote. Outside the courthouse Mosley told reporters he was "delighted." (More Max Mosley stories.)

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