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November 22, 2006updated 23 Nov 2022 2:46am

Zeta-Jones pics battle reaches House of Lords

By Press Gazette

Celebrity magazines OK! and Hello! have gone head to head in the House of Lords for the final £6 million round of their legal battle over photographs of the wedding of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

OK! reached a deal with Douglas and Zeta-Jones to buy the exclusive rights to their official wedding pictures for £1 million. The magazine sued Hello! over its use of unauthorised paparazzi pictures of the wedding.

The legal argument is over whether OK! is entitled to the compensation of more than £1 million they were awarded in the High Court but later stripped of by the Court of Appeal.

The other £5 million at stake in the hearing is made up of the legal costs for both sides, which will have to be paid by the loser.

The case will also raise the question of whether publication of the unauthorised photographs amounted to a breach of a confidence shared by the Douglases and OK! under the deal they had struck. Judgment in the case is not expected until the New Year.

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