Hello! tastes victory
2005-05-18 13:22
London - A British court on Wednesday overturned a ruling ordering celebrity magazine Hello! to pay more than two million pounds to a rival for printing unauthorised photos of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Three Court of Appeal judges backed Hello! magazine's challenge to a lower court's order that it pay more than one million pounds in damages and another one million pounds in legal costs to rival magazine OK!, which had an exclusive contract with the Hollywood couple to cover their New York wedding.
But the judges upheld the High Court's 2003 ruling that Hello! had breached the couple's commercial confidentiality by publishing secretly snapped photos of their November 2000 wedding.
Douglas and Zeta-Jones had signed an exclusive deal with OK! for rights to pictures of the nuptials at New York's Plaza Hotel.
It was only a 'spoiler'
During a dramatic six-week hearing in 2003, Zeta-Jones said she had felt "violated" when Hello! published its "sleazy and unflattering" pictures.
She singled out an image that showed Douglas feeding her wedding cake, saying "I don't usually like my husband shoving a spoon down my throat to be photographed."
In its appeal, Hello! argued that it had run its own wedding pictures as a "spoiler" to its rival's coverage - a common practice in journalism.
In its ruling, the Court of Appeal said it had decided in favour of Hello! magazine's appeal against paying the damages to its rival and against paying another million pounds in legal costs.
During the original case in November 2003, Douglas and Zeta-Jones claimed an additional £600 000 in personal damages from Hello! for the illicit pictures, with the Oscar-winning actress telling the court she felt "devastated" and "violated" when she saw them.
However, the initial hearing awarded the couple just £14 600. On Wednesday the appeal court threw out a counter-appeal by Douglas and Zeta-Jones for this sum to be increased.
"This was a spat between two rival publishers and not between Hello! and the Douglases," the lawyer for Hello!, Chris Hutchings, said following the ruling.
Hutchings said Wednesday's ruling was "a resounding win for Hello!"
Northern and Shell, which owns OK!, said it would appeal the ruling.
"This decision will impact all publishers with exclusive rights, as it means rivals will be free to run spoilers with no redress in law," the company said.
- AP