Tiger Woods Wife, Elin Nordegren Woods Wins Libel Suit

As reported by the Associate Press...

Tiger Woods' Wife Wins Libel Lawsuit

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) — The wife of golfer Tiger Woods won $183,250 and an apology Friday from an Irish magazine that published an abusive article and a faked nude photo of her.

Trevor White, publisher of The Dubliner, conceded that the article — published in September 2006 when Ireland was hosting the Ryder Cup — "was cheap, tasteless, and deliberately offensive. It was also completely untrue."

The article visibly angered Woods during the opening day of competition, which the United States lost to Europe. His wife, Elin Nordegren Woods, welcomed the settlement in a statement Friday.

"The false and deeply offensive article in The Dubliner magazine, with the accompanying photograph of another woman wrongly claimed to be me, caused great personal distress to me and my family," she said.

Nordegren Woods said she would donate the money to a cancer charity in honor of Heather Clarke, the wife of Northern Ireland golfer Darren Clarke. She died of cancer before the Ryder Cup tournament.

As part of the settlement accepted by a Dublin court, The Dubliner must publish its lengthy apology in a variety of venues, including in its next issue. If the magazine fails to meet the conditions the award will be increased to $366,500 and the publishers will have to pay Nordegren Woods' legal costs.

"This regrettable episode in our lives in no way detracts from the great love of Ireland that Tiger and I share," Nordegren Woods said. "We look forward to experiencing the extraordinary warmth of its people and of our many friends in Ireland again in the future."

The September 2006 article's headline described the U.S. golfers' wives as "Ryder Cup filth." The story claimed that Woods' wife "can be found in a variety of sweaty poses on porn sites across the Web." It also insulted the wives of golfers Chad Campbell, David Toms and Jim Furyk, who did not sue.

"The photograph was not of Ms. Nordegren Woods. There are no such photographs of Ms. Nordegren Woods on internet sites or elsewhere. Ms. Nordegren Woods has never posed, or been photographed, nude. The story was utterly and comprehensively false," White said.

Associated Press
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