Chelsea and England player Frank Lampard is the latest footballer to head for theHigh Court and is suing The Sun over a story which alleged he “sabotaged” a cookery TV show.
Lampard has filed a libel claim in the High Court over a Sun story from 26 January headlined: “Visit El’s kitchen? Er…no Franks!”.
The 26 January story claimed he had behaved in a petty manner by pulling out of television show “Marco Pierre White’s Burnout” and persuading the whole Chelsea team to do the same because his ex fiancée Elen Rivas was due to be on the show.
The 31-year-old midfielder is also suing over a website version of the story, headed: “Lampard: It’s Murder for Elern’s Show. Exclusive.”
He argues that the story injured his reputation, and caused him considerable hurt, distress and embarrassment.
Lampard is also demanding aggravated damages, saying the Sun failed to contact him to check the allegations before running the story, and says this failure was the result of a deliberate decision not to contact him.
The Sun tried to lend credibility to the story by quoting an unidentified source in the story, he says.
Lampard accuses the paper of failing to apologise, and says instead it has instead offered to print a letter from his solicitors. This, he claims is hopelessly insufficient, and involves no acceptance by the newspaper that the story was untrue.
As well as damages and aggravated damages he is seeking an injunction banning the paper from repeating the allegations at the centre of his claim.
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