18 Sep 2012

Royal lawyers win fight against topless images

11:03 pm on 18 September 2012

A French court has blocked the future publication of topless photos of the Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing while on holiday.

The injunction came after the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge took action against France's Closer magazine for selling and distributing the images, the BBC reports.

The publishers must give the originals to the couple within 24 hours.

The magazine will face a fine of 10,000 euros for every breach if it re-publishes or distributes the photos.

They were taken while the duchess was sunbathing on a private holiday with her husband at the French chateau of the Queen's nephew, Lord Linley, in Provence, earlier this month.

The couple says the publication by the magazine breached their privacy.

The BBC says the ruling came after prosecutors said they were considering whether there were grounds for criminal charges.

Applying for the injunction on Monday, Aurelien Hamelle, the lawyer representing the couple, said the scenes captured were intimate and personal and had no place on the front page of a magazine.

But a lawyer for Closer earlier claimed the royal couple's reaction was disproportionate.

After first appearing in Closer last week, the pictures were used on foreign websites, in the Irish Daily Star and most recently in Italian gossip magazine Chi.

The owners of the Daily Star have suspended the editor for publishing the pictures.

The royal couple are on a Diamond Jubilee tour of South-east Asia and the South Pacific and are currently in Tuvalu.