## Facts

- Max Mosley, a well-known Formula 1 figure and then-President of the FIA, engaged in consensual sexual activities with several women in a private flat.
- One participant secretly recorded the encounter without Mosley’s knowledge and supplied the material to a British tabloid, the *News of the World*.
- The newspaper published a front-page story with the headline “F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers,” alongside still images taken from the video and a link to online video extracts.
- Mosley sued in the English High Court for misuse of private information/breach of confidence. The court found no “Nazi” theme or public-interest justification and held the publication violated Mosley’s privacy.
- Mosley obtained damages (reported as £60,000) and substantial costs (reported as £420,000), but the publication and online dissemination had already caused wide and irreversible exposure.
- Mosley then applied to the European Court of Human Rights, alleging the United Kingdom failed to protect his Article 8 right to respect for private life by not imposing a legal duty requiring the press to notify him before publishing private-life material, which would have allowed him to seek an interim injunction.

## Issues

1. Whether Mosley retained “victim” status and had exhausted domestic remedies, even though he won damages and costs in the domestic privacy proceedings.
2. Whether the United Kingdom’s positive obligations under Article 8 required a legally binding, general duty of pre-publication notification by the press in cases involving private-life material.
3. Whether, taken with Article 8, Article 13 required stronger preventive remedies (including mandatory pre-notification) to make protection of private life effective.

## Decision

- The Court declared the application admissible, rejecting the Government’s objections on victim status and exhaustion of domestic remedies.
- The Court unanimously held there was no violation of Article 8.
- The Court held Article 8 did not require the United Kingdom to enact a general, mandatory pre-notification requirement for the press before publishing private-life material.
- The Court considered the Article 13 complaint did not call for separate examination in light of its conclusion under Article 8 (and, in any event, the complaint did not establish a Convention breach).
- The Court found the United Kingdom’s existing mix of civil privacy actions, the availability of interim injunctions where an intended publication is known, and other legal tools could satisfy the State’s Article 8 obligations, even though post-publication relief cannot fully repair the harm from disclosure.

## Legal Principles

- Article 8 can impose positive obligations on States to provide protection for private life in disputes involving private actors, but States have a margin of appreciation in choosing the means of protection.
- When private life (Article 8) conflicts with freedom of expression (Article 10), the Convention does not mandate a single procedural mechanism; the Court evaluates whether the domestic approach, taken as a whole, provides practical protection.
- The fact that disclosure of intimate material may cause harm that cannot be fully remedied by damages does not, by itself, create a Convention duty to require advance notice to the subject of a story.
- A general statutory duty of prior notification may risk interference with editorial autonomy and journalism, including the risk of pre-publication restraints in cases where publication might later be found justified.
- Effective protection under the Convention can be achieved through a combination of remedies, including civil liability and, where feasible, interim injunctive relief; Article 13 does not guarantee a remedy that always prevents publication.

## Conclusion

The European Court of Human Rights held that, although the tabloid’s publication of secretly recorded sexual material seriously interfered with Mosley’s private life and was found unlawful domestically, Article 8 did not require the United Kingdom to impose a general legal duty on the press to give advance notice before publication; the Convention permits States to rely on existing civil and injunctive remedies within their margin of appreciation.


In the Case of Mosley v. The United Kingdom, 48009/08 [2011] ECHR 774 (2011)