Motorsport: 'Nazi orgy' defamation case deferred

A Paris court has deferred until November 8 its verdict in former world motorsport chief Max Mosley's suit against a British tabloid that accused him of taking part in a Nazi-themed orgy.

The court had been due to rule on Tuesday, local time, in Mosley's defamation action against Rupert Murdoch's News Group, publisher of the now-defunct News of the World, but said it was deferring its decision for technical reasons.

Mosley, 71, already won a case in a British court against News Group, after the News of the World published a front-page story in March 2008 entitled "F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers".

The story labelled Mosley "a sadomasochistic sex pervert" and posted a video of the episode, secretly recorded by one of the participants, on its website.

Mosley, whose father led the British fascist party in the 1930s, has acknowledged paying five women for sex, but said the event depicted in the paper was a prison fantasy and challenged the claim that the episode was Nazi-themed.

The British court awarded him £60,000 in damages.

Mosley subsequently filed suit against News Group in France, which has more strict privacy laws, on charges of defamation and violating his private life. He had been asking for 200,000 euros in damages.

During the trial, his lawyer Philippe Ouakrat had admitted that only 1300 copies of the issue had been available in France but said "every edition sold was a thorn in Mosley's side".

News Group's lawyer Jean-Frederic Gaultier argued during the trial that it was inappropriate for a French court to be hearing the case, as a British court had already ruled on the matter and Mosley had "already been compensated for his global injury".

The European Court of Human Rights in May also dismissed a case brought by Mosley seeking to impose press curbs after the scandal.

He took the case to the Strasbourg-based court arguing that British law had failed to protect his private life and sought a legal change that would force newspapers to warn people before exposing their private lives.

- AAP