Magazine loses appeal over topless photos of Duchess

AN APPEALS court has upheld a ruling ordering the French edition of Closer magazine to pay €100,000 (£89,000) in civil damages and a further €100,000 in fines for publishing topless pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge in 2012.

The court in Versailles upheld the maximum fines imposed by a lower court a year ago, which found the celebrity publication guilty of invading the privacy of the Duchess.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were sunbathing on the terrace of a private chateau in Provence owned by Viscount Linley, the Queen’s nephew, when they were photographed in September 2012.

The grainy long-lens images were spread across the front and inside pages of Closer alongside an article headlined: “Oh my God!”.

In a letter read out in court last year, the Duke said the case brought back “particularly painful” memories of the paparazzi hounding his mother, the late Diana, Princess of Wales who was killed in a Paris car crash in 1997 while being pursued by photographers.

Lawyers for Laurence Pieau, the editor of Closer and Ernesto Mauri, its publisher, argued that the pictures of the Royal couple were in the public interest and conveyed a “positive image” of the Duke and Duchess.

But the court of appeal in Versailles rejected that argument and ordered both Ms Pieau and Mr Mauri to pay €45,000 (£39,900) in fines. The court also upheld the fines handed to the two photographers suspected of taking the shots. They were ordered to pay €5,000 (£4,400) each, and warned they faced additional fines if they reoffended.

Lawyers for Closer had asked the court to either cancel or reduce the fines, arguing that they were excessive for a privacy case in France, where fines and damages usually reach a fraction of those seen in the US or Britain.

But the prosecution argued that the editors’ fines were commensurate with their offence and the penalties imposed on the photographers should be stiffened rather than eased.

The damages awarded were however far short of the €1.5million the Duke and Duchess had initially sought in the case.