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Formula One's Max Mosley wins privacy suit over report of Nazi orgy

Sex report invaded privacy, judge rules

Associated Press

July 25, 2008

LONDON — After the sting of scandal, Max Mosley can feel the balm of victory.

A British judge ruled Thursday that a tabloid newspaper breached the motor sport chief's privacy with a story saying that a sadomasochistic session he took part in had a Nazi theme. The News of the World faces a legal bill of almost $2 million after the judge ordered it to pay damages and Mosley's legal costs, as well as its own.

Mosley said the ruling proves that his now-famous interest in sadomasochism is a purely private matter. But some legal experts doubt the financial blow to the newspaper will be large enough to deter the prying of Britain's scandal-hungry tabloid press.

High Court Judge David Eady ruled that Mosley, president of the governing body that oversees Formula One racing, "had a reasonable expectation of privacy" in relation to activities carried on between consenting adults on private property.

The judge said he had found no evidence that Mosley's role-playing encounter "was intended to be an enactment of Nazi behavior or adoption of any of its attitudes."

Mosley's fondness for such activities has become public knowledge since the News of the World ran a story in March giving details of his encounters in a basement flat in London.

The newspaper said one session in March had a Nazi theme—an especially explosive allegation because Mosley is the son of the late Oswald Mosley, Britain's leading fascist politician in the 1930s and a friend of Adolf Hitler's.

Mosley told the court he found the idea of Nazi fantasies abhorrent. He said he and the other participants acted out a German prison scenario, with no Nazi overtones.