Max Mosley awaits verdict

The landmark privacy case brought against the News of the World by Max Mosley (pictured), which had accused him of participating in a Nazi-themed, sado-masochistic orgy with five call-girls (he only disputes the Nazi part), came to a close yesterday, and a ruling is expected next week. Although the lynchpin of the newspaper’s case, a dominatrix known to the court as ‘Woman E’, had pulled out of giving evidence last week because she was not in an “emotional and mental state” to do so, this did not stop defence counsel Mark Warby QC ridiculing Mosley’s defence team’s assertion that the tryst was a "Carry On Spanking"-style caper.

Warby said that Mosley, 68, the son of the war-time fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley and the head of British motorsport, was trying to make out that what the newspaper called a "sick Nazi orgy" was "nothing more than hanky-spanky". He said: “There was a general attempt both in the written evidence of the women and in oral evidence to present it as some kind of worthy activity attended by the most strict health and safety precautions, as though it was all being carried out under the guidance of the Bondage and Sadomasochism Regulatory Authority. There was an attempt, we suggest quite deliberately, to turn it all into some kind of farce, or to make it sound like a tremendous giggle."

Warby ended his summing-up by saying: "I invite you to conclude that what went on in the flat suggests that, just as he has remained committed to an unfortunate interest in S&M, some of the old racist sentiments which he was prepared to endorse also remained with him – and the public are entitled to know that."

Representing Mosley, James Price QC said that the News of the World’s “gross and indefensible intrusion” was made substantially worse by the entirely false suggestion that Mosley was playing a concentration camp commandant and a cowering death camp inmate.

He told the presiding judge, Mr Justice Eady: "We shall invite you to reflect on the outrageous things which have just been said in your award of damages." Price argued that any compensation for intrusion of privacy should be greater than that for defamation "because invasion of privacy can never be repaired and the claimant has to live with it for the rest of his life".