Website pays Tulisa £42,500 damages after publishing sex tape still

 
Pa14 November 2013

Tulisa Contostavlos has accepted £42,500 damages from news website TNT over its wrongful publication of a still from a sex tape which appeared on the internet.

The settlement emerged during a hearing at London's High Court about the legal costs arising from breach of privacy proceedings brought by the 25-year-old singer against a number of defendants in March last year.

TNT took the still down as soon as it knew an injunction had been granted but it had already received up to 9,000 hits.

Today, Mr Justice Dingemans was told it was the only mainstream publisher to publish a still and this had encouraged people to look for illegal copies of the video, but TNT had said the still added nothing to the story and the public would have been aware of the video from other coverage.

The judge heard that, after an admission of liability, TNT made an offer of £42,500 compensation which was accepted and, although it had since gone into administration, its insurers were willing to pay the sum.

In July last year, Miss Contostavlos won an apology from her ex-boyfriend, rap artist Justin Edwards, who initially denied being responsible for the tape appearing on the web.

On that occasion, solicitor Jonathan Coad told the High Court that the invasion of her privacy "was of the most severe kind imaginable".

He said she had been particularly distressed by the wholly untrue allegation made by some that she was in some way complicit with the release of the footage.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in