Hello! £1m Zeta case 'was unfair'

Spoiling another magazine's bigmoney deal is a common practice, Hello! claimed yesterday, in an appeal over its £1million payout for printing wedding photos of Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas.

It admitted using 'snatched' pictures of the Hollywood stars' ceremony to undermine OK! magazine's ' exclusive' photos. James Price QC told the Appeal Court in London how Hello! cheekily tapped into the huge public interest in the ceremony by publishing its pictures first.

He said the tactic of using 'spoilers' to steal another magazine's thunder was commonplace in the industry.

He stated: 'If you are going to compete you have to publish spoilers. This was something previously not considered unlawful. What happened to Hello! was that it was caught by a law which said "stop it" retrospectively.'

He argued that spoilers could even

boost the sales of a magazine publishing official pictures by increasing public interest in a story.

Hello! was ordered to pay damages to OK! after the rival magazine lost £1,400,000 worth of sales when paparazzi gatecrashed the wedding at the Plaza Hotel, New York, in 2000.

If Hello! loses the legal challenge, it will also have to pay £14,600 damages to Zeta Jones and Douglas and £ 4million costs to OK! and the Douglases.