Max Mosley rejected by the European Court of Human Rights

The former president of the FIA filed his complaint following the revelation of his private life: on March 30, 2008, the British tabloid News of the World published the following headline: F1 boss in Nazi orgy with five prostitutes.

In addition to the three million readers that the tabloid has, the article was also published online and received 400,000 views in a single day. But even worse, hidden camera footage was posted on the site: before it was voluntarily removed the next day, it was viewed 1.4 million times!

The son of the founder of the British Nazi party, Sir Oswald Mosley, then filed a complaint in the British courts, which ruled in his favor: he received the highest sum ever awarded in the United Kingdom, as he was granted £60,000 in damages and an additional £420,000 to cover the legal costs incurred.

Nevertheless, that was not enough for the former FIA president, who then decided to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in order to require newspapers to notify the people involved before they publish the story. One might wonder about the interest of this approach for journalists since there is little chance that the said individuals would be delighted to approve such a publication and might try to prevent it.

The Court has thus decided: it acknowledges that the newspaper’s attitude in the complainant’s case is open to severe criticism. In addition to publishing articles detailing the complainant’s sexual activities, News of the World published photos and videos, obtained through clandestine recordings, which undoubtedly had a far greater impact than the articles themselves.

Nevertheless, she does not intend to side with the plaintiff and agree to their request for mandatory pre-notification. Considering the potential effect of requiring pre-notification, the significant doubts regarding the effectiveness of the obligation to pre-notify, and the broad discretion in this area, the Court is of the opinion that Article 8 does not require a legal obligation of pre-notification. Therefore, the Court concludes that there has been no violation of Article 8 of the Convention in the absence of such a requirement in national legislation.

Max Mosley can obviously only be disappointed with such a judgment, but he indicated to the BBC that he might consider appealing in order to continue defending his cause. “With private matters, the difficulty is that once it’s published, you can’t undo it. The matter comes out, it’s in the public’s mind, you can win in court later, but it remains public and there is no remedy,” he nonetheless acknowledges.

With the participation of RacingBusiness.fr