House of Lords rules in favour of Naomi Campbell/Naomi Campbell erfolgreich beim House of Lords

Deutscher Text beim Institut für Urheber- und Medienrecht.

The Independent says some say that Naomi Campbell’s win at the House of Lords creates privacy law in Britain. She agreed that the Daily Mirror had the right to publish the fact that she was a drug user, but it revealed she had been attending Narcotics Anonymous. This tended to discourage her and others from going there. The Lords weighed up the right to privacy against freedom of expression.

bq. The judgment was held up by lawyers and senior media figures as creating a de-facto privacy law by allowing celebrities to claim that the publication of information which the media knows to be private or confidential – such as medical treatment or employment records – would infringe their human right to a private life.

The case went to both the Court of Appeal (where the decision was three to zero against Campbell) and the House of Lords (where it was three to two in her favour), meaning that of the highest judges in the country, five were against her and three in favour – or something like that (the Mirror says five in favour and four against, but I think they got their arithmetic wrong).

The editor of the Daily Mirror said:

bq. This is a very good day for lying, drug-abusing prima donnas who want to have their cake with the media and the right to then shamelessly guzzle it with their Cristal champagne.

The court awarded Campbell £3,500 damages, which is not exorbitant. But of course, these cases are very expensive and so the costs of the Daily Mirror will be between £500,000 and £1 m.

bq. But The House of Lords judgment, which left the Daily Mirror facing a legal bill estimated at between £500,000 and £1m, was the latest twist in a legal saga with all the swagger and barely-concealed petulance of a Milan fashion show.

There’s a German article at Institut für Urheber- und Medienrecht. It looks good, but I find their reference to ‘Schadensersatz’ confusing. The damages hardly fall into the balance.

bq. Mit drei zu zwei Stimmen bestätigten die Richter das erstinstanzliche Urteil, wonach Naomi Campbell 5.200 Euro Schadensersatz zugesprochen worden waren. Die Entscheidung des Berufungsgerichts, nach der die Klägerin zur Zahlung der Gerichtskosten in Höhe von 520.000 Euro verpflichtet wurde, wurde zurückgenommen. Insgesamt muss das Boulevardblatt nun 1,5 Millionen Euro an Schadensersatz und Gerichtskosten zahlen.

2 thoughts on “House of Lords rules in favour of Naomi Campbell/Naomi Campbell erfolgreich beim House of Lords

  1. Daily Mail headline at p.17 Friday 7 May, 2004. ‘Naomi wins a privacy law for the rich’. I believe there are 2 Defamation Solicitors and 2 Defamation Barristers working for Associated Newspapers i.e. Daily Mail & London Evening Standard. This added rich-girl insult could not have gone un-noticed.

  2. I suppose insult is not actionable, is it? It doesn’t seem to me like a privacy law for the rich – you’d have to be in the public eye before most papers would want to write about your therapy. But of course I have no idea what the exact ratio was.

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