The dog eat dog mentality reared its head in the Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Douglas and Hello! High Court battle.
The court heard that Hello! had in the past been on the wrong side of situations similar to the one which Zeta-Jones and Douglas are complaining of. Hello! owner Eduardo Sanchez Junco told the court that the third claimant in the current battle, OK! publisher Northern & Shell, was using the case to attack a magazine whose style and appearance it had “copied”.
He said N&S was trying to “show its obsession with and animosity against Hello!, whose logos, layouts and editorial style it started out by copying”.
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He claimed it was “surprising” that OK! had alleged that, in publishing the paparazzi snaps of the Douglas wedding, Hello! had intended to cause OK! economic damage, when OK! routinely did the same thing to its rivals.
He denied setting out to damage any of the claimants, and said his main purpose in publishing the unauthorised snaps was to avoid disappointing his readers.
He thought the reaction of the couple to his magazine’s unauthorised publication of the photographs was “a little bit exaggerated”.
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