Max Mosley wants to end “ambushes” by tabloid newspapers Judges in Strasbourg are due to rule on ex-motorsports boss Max Mosley’s bid to force newspapers to notify people before exposing their private lives.
In 2008, the UK High Court ruled the News of the World invaded his right to privacy by reporting on his sex life.
Mr Mosley says financial damages could not restore his reputation and has taken his call for “prior notification” to the European Court of Human Rights.
A victory could lead to new UK privacy laws, which newspaper bosses oppose.
Mr Mosley was awarded £60,000 in damages against the News of the World for breach of privacy after they ran a story about him paying five women to take part in a sado masochistic orgy.
But he was aggrieved that he had not been made aware of the paper’s intention to publish and so never had the chance to apply for an injunction to stop the story.
At the European court, lawyers for Mr Mosley, now 71, argued that money was not a sufficient remedy for the loss of a person’s privacy.
They say newspapers should be made to notify the subject of a story before they run it.
This would give them time to seek a court order from a judge to stop the story being published.
Mr Mosley’s lawyers say the failure of UK law to oblige newspapers to notify people before exposing their private lives violates the European Human Rights Convention, to which Britain is a signatory.
If judges support Mr Mosley’s case, the government might have to reinforce privacy laws, compelling editors to go to celebrities or public figures at the heart of a story before running it.
The move would fuel the row over the use of super-injunctions to protect certain people, usually celebrities, from the media spotlight.
The government says current UK rules strike a good balance between the “right to private life” and the “right to freedom of expression”.
Newspaper bosses say imposing “pre-publication notification” to toughen the “right to private life” would amount to a breach of the “right to freedom of expression”.
Mr Mosley, the former president of the International Automobile Federation, insisted his legal case did not threaten press freedom because “in 99 cases out of 100, if they (newspapers) are going to write something about someone of any great interest they will approach the person”.
“What we are talking about here is cases where they don’t come to you… because they know if they did you would seek an injunction,” he said.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.