Now Daily Mail faces massive pay-out

While Fleet Street gleefully joined in the schadenfreude at the Express Group's £550,000 pay-out to Kate and Gerry McCann, the Daily Mail's report of their rival's shame was curiously muted. Could it have something lot to do with the fact that they had just spent an even more expensive day in the High Court?

Associated Newspapers, the Mail's parent company, yesterday paid out "very substantial" libel damages to American billionaire Sheldon Adelson (left), a casino baron listed by Forbes magazine as the third richest man in the US (and 12th richest in the world), over claims that he had engaged in cut-throat business practices and was a general all-round bad egg.

On top of the pay-out, the precise size of which has not been disclosed, Associated's legal costs during the three-year defence of the claim - according to Adelson's solicitors, Schillings - are estimated to have come in at an additional £4m.

The Mail had alleged that Sheldon, chairman and chief executive of Las Vegas Sands Corp, had colluded with Malcolm Glazer in his bid for Manchester United football club. The paper described the 74-year-old as "the ruthless casino baron who rules Las Vegas" and reported that he had joined the Glazer deal with the aim of building a casino complex at the club's Old Trafford HQ.

The Mail also accused Sheldon of 'callously' asking his wife for a divorce on the eve of her cancer operation - a request that the paper said he made through a friend. The paper further claimed that Sheldon had diddled his stepchildren out of a fortune by buying shares in one of his companies off them at a fraction of their true value.

The Associated newspaper has apologised unreservedly for all the allegations, and will be publishing an apology tomorrow. The Daily Express, for one, is already crowing in today's edition about the Mail's plight.