In closing statements, both attorneys’s for News of the World and Max Mosley made their arguments.The story I am referring to can be found here in its entirety. Max has been trying to denounce that there were any Nazi themes to his S&M sexcapade and that it was a gross intrusion of privacy and illegal to run the story. The News of the world (NOTW) has been trying to ask, if it wasn’t Nazi concentration camps, then what the heck could it be? The NOTW had lost a key witness in the case and Mosley’s legal team jumped on the chance:
The “true reason” she was not called “is one or other of two things”. “Either the defendant could not risk her going into the witness box and telling the truth, as told by Women A to D, or she herself feared that the truth would emerge from the cross-examination,”
NOTW attorney Mr. Warby asked:
why, if there were no Nazi elements to the session, Mr Mosley and woman A were so desperate to try to cover up what went on, such as through the deletion of emails.
“If it’s not meant to be Nazi, then what on earth is it meant to be?” he said.
But what I find most interesting is this:
Warby added that even in a tolerant and broadminded society, there were some things that were fundamentally contrary to western values, such as the brutality of the Nazi era, and that the FIA’s membership had a right to expect their elected leader to comply with proper standards, both in his professional and private life.
Mosley’s “unhealthy addiction” was vicious, he said, and the amount of money he devoted to it – £75,000 in a year – was a measure of how much it had taken over his life.
So an innocent sexual fantasy is now ruling Max’s life to the point that he spends $150,000 a year on it? I know people with big money have big appetites but could this be thought of as over the top? As a non-paid position, just where does the money come from?
But perhaps the most maligned argument had to be the attempt at distancing the Plaintiff from the Nazi motif with this gem of legal credulity-seeking drivel.
Mosley’s QC said the outrage from the Nazi era was the abuse of human beings and human rights.
“To dress up in Nazi clothing is tasteless and puerile, but it is not an abuse of human rights,” Price added.
“The defendant’s motivation was to publish a scandalous exposé. End of story. Nothing else,” he said.
“It’s wholly obvious that the enjoyment of lawful consensual S and M activity in private cannot justify the use of a hidden camera recording for publication.”
