Madonna wants £5m for wedding photos

Madonna is claiming £5m damages from the Mail on Sunday for breach of privacy after it ran a number of photographs taken at her and Guy Ritchie's wedding in Scotland eight years ago in October.

In the High Court yesterday, it was revealed that the photos, which were published in the newspaper in October, had been "surreptitiously" copied by an interior designer who was working at the 50-year-old singer's home in Beverly Hills.

No photographs of the marriage had been published anywhere in the world until the newspaper used 11 pictures over the front page and a double-page inside spread. The court was told that Madonna, 50, who recently divorced Ritchie, 40, on the grounds of his unreasonable behaviour, was given no warning about the publication.

Madonna's barrister, Matthew Nicklin, said the singer had been "ambushed, for the simple reason that if the Mail on Sunday had told her what they intended to do, the claimant would have sought and obtained an injunction."

The case is being heard by Mr Justice Eady – who was recently the subject of an outspoken attack by Paul Dacre, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday. He accused the judge of being partly responsible for allowing a privacy law through the back door.