Sheridan set to double damages award

TOMMY Sheridan could receive around double his original £200,000 damages award against the News Of The World because of a decade of interest charges, it has emerged.

Sheridan’s lawyer, Gordon Dangerfield, told the Sunday Herald he expected the standard “judicial rate of interest” of eight per cent per year to apply to the damages, making the final award close to £400,000.

The former Scottish Socialist and Solidarity leader scored a critical victory over the defunct newspaper last week, when three judges refused to strike down his defamation win of 2006. A jury awarded Sheridan £200,000 after he sued the paper for claiming he was a swinger and an adulterer while a Glasgow MSP. However, in 2010, Sheridan was jailed for committing perjury during the defamation action. The News Of The World’s publisher, News International, had asked the Court of Session to strike down the 2006 verdict in order to end Sheridan’s claim on the £200,000.

However, the Court refused, saying the jury could have fairly decided that Sheridan was defamed even if they did not believe he was squeaky clean.

The judges also said they felt they “should not ignore” material suggesting the News Of The World spent £10,000 sending a key witness, Fiona McGuire, to Dubai during the 2006 action.

A memo from the paper’s editor, quoted in the court judgment, described McGuire, who was the source of the first Sheridan adultery story, as its “most flaky witness”.

In 2011, McGuire told police her evidence against Sheridan in 2006 had been “untrue”.