British supermodel Naomi Campbell faced a legal bill of hundreds of thousands of dollars on Monday after a tabloid newspaper which had revealed her struggle against drugs won a court appeal.
Campbell had been awarded $5,450 -- and hundreds of thousands in court costs -- in a judgment against the Daily Mirror in March for breaching her privacy by reporting correctly that she had visited a drugs clinic.
But a three-judge appeals court panel overturned that decision on Monday, saying the newspaper's reporting was "justifiable in the public interest."
"We consider that the detail that was given...(was) a legitimate, if not essential, part of the journalistic package designed to demonstrate that Miss Campbell had been deceiving the public when she said that she did not take drugs."
The new ruling means Campbell will have to pay the court costs of the trial, which Mirror editor Piers Morgan put at $1.1 million.
"I don't jump up and down with glee about this," Morgan told Sky television. "She obviously is fairly troubled. But I don't think her decision to go to court to gag the media helped her problems. I think it made it worse.
"Obviously she's facing a massive bill (for court costs). But we would have been facing that bill.
"This is a wake-up call today to all these celebrities queuing up to take on the media. We will defend ourselves vigorously."
Campbell said in a statement on her Web site, www.naomicampbell.com, that she had launched the case to "ensure that I and any other sufferers could receive therapy without intrusion from the media."
It said Campbell would appeal the latest ruling.
Just because she had previously lied about her drugs use did not make private life a fair target, she said.
"The idea that because you deny something about your private life automatically entitles the media to publish otherwise private information, seems to me to be very harsh indeed."
(China Daily October 15, 2002)
