The celebrity wedding took place in November 2000. The couple
sold the exclusive photo rights to the event to OK! magazine for £1
million. But a paparazzo intruder disrupted their plans when he
surreptitiously took some rather poor shots of the couple. These
were then bought for publication in OK!'s rival magazine,
Hello!
In April the couple won their case in the High Court claiming
that Hello! had breached rights of commercial confidence by
publishing the photos. An additional claim for invasion of privacy
was rejected by the court.
The question of damages was left to a later date, but on 7th
November the Court finally delivered its ruling. The judge awarded
£1,033,156 to OK! in respect of the magazine's commercial losses,
but made a small award to Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas.
This amounted to £3,750 each for their distress at the
publication of the unauthorised photos, £7,000 for additional costs
in having to help OK! bring forward the publication of the
authorised pictures, and £50 each under the Data Protection
Act.
The nominal sum under the Data Protection Act was explained in
the April judgment. The Honourable Mr Justice Lindsay reasoned
that, while the couple may have suffered damage or distress, such
damage or distress was not by reason of a contravention of the
Act.
Following the Act, Hello! should have sought permission to print
the photographs; but Justice Lindsay asked, "If the obligations
under the Act had been performed would it truly have made any
difference?"
He speculated that permission would have been refused and that
Hello! would have elected to go ahead and publish in any event.
"Thus," he wrote, "although I hold there to have been a breach
of the requirements of the Data Processing Act [sic], I do not see
it as adding a separate route to recovery for damage or distress
beyond a nominal award, which I shall make."
His reasoning appears to be based on the fact that they were
compensated for distress on other grounds, to the sum of £3,750
each.
According to Reuters, Hello! was "very happy" with the award
made to Zeta-Jones and Douglas, commenting, "It reiterates clearly
the decision of Mr Justice John Lindsay that Hello! at no time had
any intention of damaging Michael Douglas and Catherine
Zeta-Jones." Inevitably Hello! was less happy with the seven-figure
sum awarded to OK!
