World motorsport boss Max Mosley has won a legal action against a Sunday Serb forces arrest Karadzic ...
German Concentration Camp Memorial Vandalized ...
Mosley sues over Nazi orgy claim ... newspaper over claims an orgy he took part in had Nazi overtones.

The High Court ruled the News of the World did breach Mr Mosley's privacy, awarding him £60,000 in damages.

Mr Justice Eady said he could expect privacy for consensual "sexual activities (albeit unconventional)".

Mr Mosley admitted a sado-masochistic sex session with five prostitutes, but denied that it had a Nazi theme.

The paper's story was based on a secret video from one of the women who took part in the sex session at a London flat in March.

At the High Court, Mr Justice Eady said there was "no evidence that the gathering on 28 March 2008 was intended to be an enactment of Nazi behaviour or adoption of any of its attitudes. Nor was it in fact.

"I see no genuine basis at all for the suggestion that the participants mocked the victims of the Holocaust."

The "bondage, beating and domination" that did take place was "typical of S and M behaviour", he said.

"But there was no public interest or other justification for the clandestine recording, for the publication of the resulting information and still photographs, or for the placing of the video extracts on the News of the World website - all of this on a massive scale."

However, the judge did not make the unprecedented award of punitive - rather than compensatory - damages that had been sought by Mr Mosley.

The 68-year-old says his life has been devastated by the News of the World story and the posting of the video footage on its website.

He told the court that the publicity had been "totally devastating" for his wife of 48 years, and he could think of "nothing more undignified or humiliating" for his two sons to experience.

The paper's editor, Colin Myler, had told the court that he believed the story was one of "legitimate public interest and one that I believe was legitimately published".

He also said: "We felt that what we saw, what we witnessed, was on balance a fair and reasonable interpretation of Nazi-style role-play."

Mr Mosley is president of the International Automobile Federation (FIA), the governing body for sports such as Formula 1.

His father was the 1930s Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley.

(BBC)

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