Diaz wins 'cheating' libel battle

Hollywood actress Cameron Diaz has won "substantial" libel damages over a claim that she was cheating with a married man.

Diaz, 34, who recently announced the end of her four-year relationship with singer Justin Timberlake, sued American Media Incorporated, publishers of the National Enquirer, over an article published on its website in May last year.

Her solicitor, Simon Smith, told London's High Court, that the article reported that Diaz had engaged in a "smooching session" with Shane Nickerson, the supervising producer on her MTV show, Trippin'.

It claimed that Diaz had been caught on camera kissing Nickerson in the bushes outside a sound studio in Santa Monica, California in broad daylight.

It also went on to report that the revelation would cause a rift between her and Timberlake and was "certain to throw the future of one of Hollywood's most famous couples into doubt".

Once Diaz complained, the article and accompanying photographs were removed from the website.

The magazine has accepted that the photos did not show Diaz and Nickerson kissing or in a passionate clinch and that any suggestion of a romantic involvement was entirely untrue and without substance.

The magazine apologised unreservedly for the distress caused to Diaz, Timberlake, Nickerson and his wife, and had agreed to pay Diaz undisclosed damages.

Sam Howard, the magazine's solicitor, said that it entirely accepted that the allegations were without foundation and ought never to have been published.

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