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August 27, 2013updated 28 Aug 2013 12:53pm

Sunday Times settles £1m legal case with Lance Armstrong over 2006 ‘cheat and a liar’ libel payout

By Dominic Ponsford

The Sunday Times has reached an out of court settlement with cyclist Armstrong over its claim for the return of more than £1m in libel damages and costs.
Armstrong sued the Sunday Times in 2004 over an article by David Walsh headlined LA Confidential which was later said in court to carry the meaning that the cyclist was a "fraud, a cheat and a liar".
In 2006 the paper decided to settle the case paying Armstrong £300,000 in libel damages.
Last year it sued for the return of that money, as well as more than £720,000 in costs, after the US anti drugs agency said that Armstrong was a key figure in "the most sophistated doping conspiracy" it had seen. The seven-time Tour de France winner later admitted that his many denials about drug use had been "one big lie"
.
As well as suing the Sunday Times, Armstrong had sued Walsh and former deputy sports editor Alan English personally.
The Sunday Times reports that the paper and the two journalists have "reached a mutually acceptable final resolution to all claims against Lance Armstrong related to the 2012 High Court proceeedings and are entirely happy with the agreed settlement, the terms of which remain confidential".
David Walsh was named journalist of the year at the first British Journalism Awards last year in recognition of his 13-year investigation into Armstrong.
He first raised questions about Armstrong's methods in a 1999 article for the Sunday Times.
The June 2004 piece which prompted the lawsuit summarised allegations contained in a book co-written by Walsh.
At a pre-trial hearing in 2006 the article was held to mean that Armstrong had cheated throughout his career. The Sunday TImes reported this week that, at the time, the paper felt it had to settle the case because "proving he had doped throughout his career would have been extremely difficult".

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