BRITAIN: Roman Polanski won £50,000 (€71,930) damages yesterday in a historic libel action which forced him to relive the horrific murder of wife Sharon Tate 36 years ago.
The 71-year-old film director sued over a July 2002 Vanity Fair story which said he made a pass at a woman - model Beatte Telle - in Elaine's restaurant in New York, just after the August 1969 tragedy. Tate, a 26-year-old actress who was eight months pregnant, died with four others at her Californian home at the hands of Charles Manson's "family".
John Kelsey-Fry QC told Mr Justice Eady and a London jury that Mr Polanski had been "monstrously libelled for the sake of a lurid anecdote". The article by AE Hochner recounted an onlooker, Lewis Lapham, as saying of Polanski: "Fascinated by his performance, I watched as he slid his hand inside her thigh and began a long honeyed spiel which ended with the promise, 'And I will make another Sharon Tate out of you'."
A panel of nine men and three women took 4½ hours to find that publishers Condé Nast had not proved the words complained of were substantially true.
Mr Polanski was not in court because of his fear of extradition to the US following his flight from the country in 1978 while awaiting sentence for having sex with a 13-year-old girl. He followed proceedings via video link from Paris - the first time a libel case before a jury has proceeded in this way.
The move followed a House of Lords ruling in February that Mr Polanski should not be denied access to justice because of his fear of being extradited to the US.
In a statement, he said: "Three years of my life have been interrupted. Three years within which I have had no choice but to relive the horrible events of August 1969."
The magazine argued he should not receive any damages as his reputation had already been ruined by his 1977 conviction and promiscuous past. Mr Polanski, backed by actress Mia Farrow, said the incident simply never happened and dismissed Mr Lapham's version of events as "an abominable lie".