Former F1 boss Max Mosley loses privacy case

The verdict in Strasbourg marked the last stage in Mr Mosley’s campaign for tighter privacy laws following revelations of his sex life in the News of the World.

In 2008 the UK High Court awarded him £60 000 damages after ruling that there was no justification for a front-page article and pictures about his meeting with five prostitutes in a London flat.

But Mr Mosley pursued the case to the European Court of Human Rights, challenging UK privacy laws which allow publication without giving their targets advanced warning.

His lawyer told a hearing in January that the failure of UK law to oblige newspapers to notify their “victims” before exposing their private lives violated the European Human Rights Convention, to which Britain is a signatory.

The High Court damages award did not restore Mr Mosley’s privacy, said Lord Pannick QC – but “prior notification” would have given him the chance to seek an injunction preventing publication.

Read more: Sex, lies and super-injunctions

Mr Mosley’s failure at the human rights court represents a setback for those campaigning to reinforce privacy laws and to oblige editors to inform celebrities about stories concerning them before they appear.

Newspapers bosses have warned that imposing a “pre-publication notification” to toughen the “right to private life” would amount to a breach of the “right to freedom of expression”.

But at the time of January’s hearing Mr Mosley commented: “If a newspaper is going to write something about your private life, or something you might reasonably wish to keep private, they should tell you beforehand.

“I think press freedom is absolutely vital and it has to be protected at all costs. It’s the basis of a modern democracy – but that’s a very different thing from newspapers concealing from you that they’re going to publish something that’s illegal.”

He has insisted his legal case did not threaten press freedom because “in 99 cases out of 100, if they (newspapers) are going to write something about someone of any great interest they will approach the person.

“What we are talking about here is cases where they don’t come to you, they even perhaps publish a spoof first edition, because they know if they did you would seek an injunction.”

At present newspapers often keep stories secret to avoid getting an interim injunction from the subject of the claims, postponing publication.