Result
Member of the Scottish Parliament Tommy Sheridan has won his libel case against the tabloid scandal sheet The News of The World, and has been awarded 200,000 pounds in damages by the court.
I must admit not have really been following the case closely, but what I did know was that there were ten witnesses Sheridan said were perjuring themselves, and that he’d fired his legal team halfway through, neither of which circumstance boded well for a victory, in my opinion.
Well, I was wrong.
The Glasgow MSP brought the civil action after the newspaper alleged he cheated on his wife, visited a swingers club and participated in orgies.
But after 23 days the jury of six men and five women took just two-and-a-half hours to deliver the verdict that has cleared the politician.
Mr Sheridan’s victory is another blow to the News of the World, whose investigative methods have come under close scrutiny after a jury recently cleared three men of plotting to buy radioactive material for a terrorist “dirty bomb”.
The so-called red mercury trial put the spotlight on the paper’s celebrated “fake sheikh” undercover reporter, Mazher Mahmood.
Mr Sheridan, who sacked his legal team on day nine of the case and conducted his own defence, denied the claims and said he was the victim of “the mother of all stitch-ups”
