Mosley wins French privacy ruling against NotW publishers

It is the second time that the NotW has been found to have breached the privacy rights of the former motor racing boss. In 2008 the UK High Court ruled that the paper had violated Mosley's right to privacy when it published a story and video detailing an orgy in which Mosley took part.

The High Court ordered the paper to pay Mosley £60,000 in damages. At the time the judge said the paper's allegation that Mosley's sex life had Nazi undertones was unproven and that the article was unjustified. Mosley is the son of Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British fascists in the 1930s and 1940s.

A French court has ordered News International, the former publisher of the now-defunct NotW, to pay Max Mosley €7,000 in damages and €15,000 in legal costs after 1,500 copies of the paper containing the Mosley sex orgy story were sold in France, according to the Daily Telegraph. The publisher was also ordered to pay a €10,000 fine to the French state, the paper said in its report.

Mosley had sought €100,000 in damages from News International and the reporter who wrote the story, Neville Thurlbeck. The Paris court did not penalise Thurlbeck, rejecting claims made by Mosley that he had been defamed by the article, and ruling that Thurlbeck should not be made responsible for making the story available in France, according to the Telegraph's report.

“It was very important for Mr Mosley to have the paper condemned in a criminal court as proves [sic] that the News of the World is a delinquent newspaper," Mosley's lawyer said after the ruling, according to the Telegraph's report. The lawyer called the paper's €10,000 fine   “significant compared to the usual amounts against foreign newspapers in such cases in France".

Earlier this year Mosley lost a legal battle at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in which he sought a ruling on changes to UK privacy law. The Court rejected Mosley's argument that publishers should have to notify story subjects in advance of printing articles about them.

In weighing up individual's privacy rights and the rights of freedom of expression – both guaranteed rights under the European Convention on Human Rights – the ECHR said that introducing a prior notification requirement on publishers would have a "chilling effect" on free speech because it would give the subjects of stories the chance to obtain a court order preventing publication.