SHERIDAN WINS NEW NOTW PAYOUT
He wins court interest claim reversal
FIREBRAND politician Tommy Sheridan was yesterday awarded an extra £176,000 payment from the publishers of the now defunct News of the World.
The former Scottish Socialist Party leader had been awarded £200,000 by a jury after a successful defamation action against the newspaper in August 2006 after they published false claims about his love life.
In the story in 2004, they accused Sheridan of cheating on his wife Gail and of attending a swingers’ club, claims he denied.
Yesterday, the former MSP’s legal team successfully argued that he was due interest on the payment from the court case.
Last year, his lawyer Gordon Dangerfield argued at the Court of Session in Edinburgh that Sheridan was entitled to another £200,000 payment from the paper’s parent group, News Group Newspapers.
Mr Dangerfield wanted judge Lord Turnbull to award the sum, which equated to interest at eight per cent a year, because journalists at the publication broke the law by hacking his mobile phone.
He said his client, who was jailed in 2011 for committing perjury during the defamation action, had also committed wrongdoing but it was at “many levels below” the conduct of the News of the World.
During the proceedings, Roddy Dunlop QC, for News Group, said it could “be taken as read” that Sheridan’s phone had been hacked.
But he argued that News Group shouldn’t be liable to pay the extra sum.
Lord Turnbull criticised the paper’s “utterly reprehensible” conduct but refused to grant the extra payment.
Civil appeal judges yesterday overturned Lord Turnbull’s decision on appeal.
In a written judgment, Lord Carloway, Lord Menzies and Lord Brodie concluded that their colleague misinterpreted the law surrounding payments.
Lord Carloway wrote: “Interest will run on the jury’s verdict at the judicial rate of eight per cent per annum from August 11, 2006, until May 30, 2017, the date when the defenders paid the principal sum.”