Formula 1 boss loses 'orgy' video legal battle

The High Court today refused to grant an injunction stopping the News of the World putting a 90-second extract of an "intrusive and demeaning" video involving motorsport boss Max Mosley and five prostitutes on its website.

Mr Justice Eady, in London, said the events, which were chronicled in the newspaper last month under the heading "F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers", had received massive worldwide coverage, both in newspapers and on various websites.

Anyone who wished to access the footage could easily do so, and there was no point in barring the News of the World from showing what was already available.

The judge said: "I have come to the conclusion that the material is so widely accessible that an order in the terms sought would make very little practical difference.

"One may express this conclusion either by saying that Mr Mosley no longer has any reasonable expectation of privacy in respect of this now widely familiar material or that, even if he has, it has entered the public domain to the extent that there is, in practical terms, no longer anything which the law can protect. The dam has effectively burst.

"I have, with some reluctance, come to the conclusion that although this material is intrusive and demeaning, and despite the fact that there is no legitimate public interest in its further publication, the granting of an order against this respondent at the present juncture would merely be a futile gesture."

Mr Mosley, who was not in court, is pursuing a claim for breach of privacy against News Group Newspapers, with a five-day trial expected in July.