Royalty vs. the Press (Contd.)

The Queen sues a London tabloid for punitive damages

Kieran Kenny, then 17 years old and an unemployed surveyor trainee from industrial Wigan in Britain's Lancashire, must have touched the heart of someone at Buckingham Palace when he wrote a plaintive letter to Queen Elizabeth II in 1980, asking for a job. Within weeks Kenny was hired as a stores (pantry) clerk and assigned lodgings in the staff quarters. Like all employees of the royal household, Kenny had to pledge in writing never to reveal to outsiders what goes on inside the royal residences.

Soon after he quit a month ago, however, Kenny supplied racy recollections to Britain's biggest daily, Rupert Murdoch's sensational tabloid, the Sun (circ. 4.2 million), for the unprincely sum of about $2,000. The first installment, splashed across two pages last week, purported to describe the "amorous antics" of the Queen's second son, Prince Andrew, 23, including one putative tryst in a gallery in Windsor Castle hung with portraits of his royal ancestors. Kenny was quoted as telling the Sun: "[Andrew's] dates were always young and fanciable. He was so sure of his chances--and so cheeky--that he would order double bacon and eggs the night before." The story ended with a titillating banner about the Princess of Wales: TOMORROW: WHEN BAREFOOT DI BUTTERED MY TOAST.

British readers may never learn, however, what that headline was meant to imply. Deeply angered by the increasingly tasteless and intrusive reporting of Britain's tabloid press, the royal household struck back. Within hours after the Sun's opening story hit London newsstands, palace aides representing the Queen sought, and got, a permanent injunction from Britain's High Court banning any further disclosures by Kenny, the Sun or its parent News Group Newspapers Ltd., on the ground that publication would violate the former servant's contractual pledge of secrecy. News Group halted efforts to syndicate the series in other countries, a spokesman said, to avoid being held in contempt of court, but vowed to appeal the decision.

Still more royal fury was to come. Next day, in a step unprecedented in the history of the British monarchy, the Queen sued Kenny and News Group for unspecified monetary damages. The royal family's use of injunctions to block unwelcome disclosures in the press is not new. In 1849 Queen Victoria's consort Prince Albert went to court to forestall publication of sketches drawn by himself and his wife. The last use was in May 1981 to prohibit distribution of alleged transcripts of telephone conversations between Prince Charles and his then fiancee Lady Diana. But last week marked the first time the royal family has sued a newspaper for punitive damages.

Buckingham Palace offered no official explanation of the thinking behind the extraordinary step, but stern legal action may have been under consideration for some time. In an interview with TIME for the Feb. 28 cover story on "Royalty vs. the Pursuing Press," the Queen's press secretary Michael Shea said, "We might have to move forward some policy of sanction. The line should be drawn between legitimate public interest, which all members of the royal family recognize, and prurient or highly intrusive following of private lives."

When the suit was filed, with Queen Elizabeth's approval, she was 6,000 miles away aboard the royal yacht Britannia, leaving La Paz, Mexico, for San Diego, the next stop on her month-long visit to North America. The target of the Sun's story, Prince Andrew, was also at sea, after a weekend recreational visit to Florida, with the Royal Navy ship on which he serves, H.M.S. Invincible. Andrew was pursued by a battalion of U.S. and foreign reporters and photographers, frenziedly but fruitlessly seeking signs of a rendezvous between the Prince and soft-porn Actress Koo Stark, 26, or other women.

Kenny, who was once again out of work, insisted that he meant no harm to his erstwhile employers. He claimed, "I would be very sad if I thought I had upset the royal family. They have never been anything but good to me." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.