Mosley won the highest-ever UK privacy payout when the
News of the World was ordered to pay £60,000 in damages over a
story and video it published detailing an orgy in which Mosley took
part.
Mosley has said, though, that the payout is not the right form
of redress, and that he should have had the right to try to stop
the story from being printed in the first place.
Mosley is the president of the body which governs Formula One
car racing. He is the son of Oswald Mosley, the leader of the
British fascists in the 1930s and 1940s. The News of the World
printed details and published an online video of an orgy which they
said had Nazi overtones.
The High Court found that the Nazi link had not been proven and
that the publication violated Mosley's privacy. Though there has
traditionally been no British right to privacy it has begun to be
relied on in courts because of Article Eight of the European
Convention on Human Rights, which became law in the UK through the
Human Rights Act.
Article Eight guarantees every citizen the right to respect for
their family and private life. It is this Article on which Mosley
is basing his European action.
"The starting point for this application is that Article 8 of
the European Convention on Human Rights provides those in the UK
with a right to respect for their privacy," said Mosley's lawyer
Dominic Crossley of Steeles Law in a statement. "Following the
publication that Sunday, the only legal remedy available to Mr
Mosley in the UK was to bring a claim for damages i.e. financial
compensation."
"The only effective remedy would have been to prevent the
publication in the first place by means of an injunction; but
because he did not know about the article beforehand, the
opportunity of an injunction was not open to him," said
Crossley.
Mosley wants the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights
to order the UK to force editors to tell subjects of stories what
is about to be published. He claims that this is the only way that
a right to privacy can be enforceable.
"The current position in the UK is that, although we all have a
right to privacy, it is entirely up to the editor of a newspaper
whether or not we are able to exercise that right in any effective
or meaningful way," said Crossley's statement. "The editor of a
newspaper, acting alone, can take a decision to publish material
which may ruin a life or destroy a family, safe in the knowledge
that even if publication is later held to be unlawful, there will
be no significant consequences for him or his employers."
"Without a legal or regulatory duty upon newspapers to notify an
individual before the publication of private information about
them, the UK has no real or effective protection in place for the
right of privacy, something which it is obliged to do under the
Human Rights Act," said Crossley. "Whilst we all have a theoretical
right to privacy this right can be and is violated before we can do
anything about it. Mr Mosley’s experience is testament to
this."
Mosley is not seeking any increase in the damages paid to him
and says that those damages have been donated to charity.
