February 18 has been scheduled for the start of the last round of the legal battle between Naomi Campbell and the Daily Mirror.
At a hearing for which two days have been set aside, the supermodel’s legal team will challenge an Appeal Court decision to strip her of High Court damages she was awarded over a story about her attending Narcotics Anonymous.
Last year when they gave permission for the appeal, the Lords indicated that the issues to be decided were whether, when it had been decided that the paper was entitled to publish the fact Campbell had been addicted to drugs, the publication of details relating to non-medical treatment she had received and a photograph of her leaving a treatment session constituted a breach of confidence or invasion of her privacy.
The other question to be decided is whether the exemption in the Data Protection Act in respect of data processing with view to journalistic publication applied to publication of the article in the Mirror.
In the Appeal Court in 2002, Campbell was stripped of the £3,500 damages she had won after sueing the Mirror over revelations that she had been attending Narcotics Anonymous.
In overturning the High Court ruling in the decision now to be challenged, Master of the Rolls Lord Phillips said he and Lords Justices Chadwick and Keene considered that the Mirror had been entitled to publish what it did in the public interest.
By Roger Pearson
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