Daily Mail to pay £125,000 libel damages over TV psychic 'scam' claim - Graham Atkins

 

Paper apologises over article making untrue allegation that Sally Morgan used hidden earpiece to scam theatre audience




The Daily Mail has apologised and agreed to pay £125,000 in libel damages to a TV psychic it falsely accused of using a hidden earpiece to scam a theatre audience.

Sally Morgan, who has appeared on TV and on stage under the name "Psychic Sally", complained that the article in September 2011 meant she had "deliberately and dishonestly" tricked her audience in Dublin.

The article, by the magician Paul Zenon, claimed that Morgan had used a hidden earpiece during her performance in order to receive instructions and relay them on stage as if they were messages from the spiritual world.

In a statement at the high court on Thursday, the solicitor for Morgan, Graham Atkins of the law firm Atkins Thomson, said the article had "caused enormous distress" to the psychic.

"The allegation contained in the article that Mrs Morgan cheated the audience in Dublin is completely false and defamatory of her," he told Mr Justice Tugendhat.

"It also caused enormous distress to Mrs Morgan, who decided, given the newspaper's initial defence of the article, that she had no choice but to commence legal proceedings against the publisher of the Daily Mail."

The solicitor Brid Jordan appeared on behalf of the Daily Mail publisher, Associated Newspapers, and apologised unreservedly for the hidden earpiece claim "which it accepts is untrue".

Atkins told the court that the article appeared in the Daily Mail "in the context of a general attack on psychics as being charlatans". Read more--->>>>>

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