Daily Mail pays substantial libel damages to celebrity psychic sally Morgan

The Daily Mail has agreed to pay sally Morgan £125,000 in damages and legal costs in settlement of her libel claim.  Mrs Morgan, well-known for her televised and in-theatre appearances as a psychic, sued the Daily Mail for an article published in september 2011.  The article in question suggested that Mrs Morgan had cheated an audience in Dublin in september 2011 by using a hidden ear piece to receive instructions.

The Daily Mail had initially defended the published article and the matter was set down for trial.  However, on 20 June 2013 the settlement was announced in a statement made in open court.

The Daily Mail alleged in the article that Mrs Morgan had used an earpiece by which crew members fed her information to repeat on stage. The specific accusation stemmed from an Irish radio programme, where two women said that they had heard crew members say something which was then apparently repeated by Mrs Morgan on stage to her Dublin audience.  Following this the allegations were then repeated by the Daily Mail both in hard copy and online in an article written by the magician Paul Zenon.  The theatre backed Mrs Morgan in her defence reaffirming that the allegation was unfounded and that the crew members who were suggested to be part of the scam were in fact, sub-contracted by the theatre and not part of Mrs Morgans stage crew.

In the statement made by The Daily Mails lawyers in the High Court, the allegations against Mrs Morgan were withdrawn and it was accepted that the article was untrue.