• Express and Star owner faces estimated £1.25m bill
• Bower celebrates with some jurors after verdict

The press baron Richard Desmond lost a high court libel battle with journalist Tom Bower today, in a verdict that will give ammunition to those who claim he is an interfering proprietor who uses his publications to settle personal grudges.

The 57-year-old owner of Express and Star newspapers and OK! magazine was left with a legal bill estimated at £1.25m after the jury returned a majority verdict to say he had not been libelled in two pages of Bower’s unauthorised biography of the jailed newspaper tycoon Conrad Black.

Desmond complained his reputation as a tough businessman had been damaged because Bower made him look like a “wimp”, and in court denied allegations he ordered journalists to print hatchet jobs on his enemies.

As the jury foreman announced the decision, Desmond remained impassive. His wife of 26 years, Janet, who has been by his side for the whole of the nine-day trial, turned to him and said “Oh well,” and shrugged, as the pair headed to the back entrance where their chauffeur was waiting.

On the other side of court 13, Bower smiled, and accepted a kiss from his solicitor. His two barristers embraced: for a defendant to win a libel case is an exceptionally rare thing.

Desmond brought the libel action because he objected to Bower’s account of his relationship with Black back in 2001-02, when the pair owned rival newspaper groups ‑ Desmond being newly in possession of the Express and Star newspapers, and Black running the Telegraph Group.

In his unauthorised biography of Black, entitled Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge, Bower wrote that the Canadian tycoon humiliated Desmond by making him apologise for negative articles printed in the Sunday Express about the imminent demise of the Telegraph’s parent company, Hollinger International.

As Hollinger did implode, Bower argued that Desmond had been “ground into the dust” by Black by saying sorry for something which was true, just as the Canadian tycoon had got the better of countless others.

Proprietor’s feuds

In court, Bower’s barrister, Ronald Thwaites QC concentrated less on the words complained of and more on attempting to rubbish Desmond’s reputation. He dug up evidence of past feuds, rooted out a disgruntled former colleague and did his best to wind Desmond up in cross-examination.

He mocked Desmond’s “thin skin”, and said the case had merely been brought because of Desmond’s bruised pride at having been bettered by Black.

Central to Bower’s defence was the claim that Desmond regularly ordered his journalists to print negative articles about his rivals ‑ specifically Conrad Black ‑ to settle his grudges. Thwaites referred to Desmond as a “malevolent” and “interfering” proprietor who would tell lies “at the drop of a hat”.

After lengthy legal arguments, Thwaites was eventually allowed to play to the jury a tape of a phone call from July 2008, in which Desmond issued a threat to a business contact. In this conversation, Desmond warned he could be “the worst fucking enemy you’ll ever have”. Three days later a libellous article appeared in the Sunday Express about the contact and his hedge fund, Pentagon Capital Management.

Desmond in his evidence denied having anything to do with the Sunday Express printing a story about Pentagon, and denied any existence of a grudge against the fund. Yet the jury were told that earlier this year a statement, read out in open court after Desmond agreed to settle the libel action which resulted from that article, said: “Mr Desmond accepts that it was his comments in the presence of Sunday Express journalists that prompted the Sunday Express to publish the article.”

But even in defeat today, Desmond didn’t flinch, and issued an extraordinary statement that almost suggested he thought he had won.

It said: “I sued Mr Bower for defamation because he made inaccurate and damaging allegations about me, yet he refused to apologise and publish a correction … His biggest mistake was in thinking I would not go to court to uphold my reputation and the resulting action has cost many hundreds of thousands of pounds to defend a few ill-thought-out remarks that were not even essential to his book. It was worth it to stand up in court and set the record straight.”

The Express website tonight carried Desmond’s statement under the headline “I set record straight”, but did not mention that the court case had been lost.

Outside the courtroom, six of the jurors rushed to congratulate Bower, and asked him to sign copies of the offending biography of Black.

He happily obliged, telling them they had done “a great service to British journalism” for which he would be “eternally grateful”.

Kissing jurors

They asked about his next book, a study on oil money and greed, and he promised to send them each a complementary copy. Two of the female jurors were even given a kiss by the moustachioed biographer. Not even Jeffrey Archer did this, muttered one Fleet Street veteran.

“I think I have been a victim of a very rich man trying to suppress the truth,” said a delighted Bower, adding that he very much hoped his long unpublished biography of Desmond, entitled Rough Trader, would soon be in the shops. Bower’s counsel implied throughout the case that Desmond’s real motive in bringing the action was to stop the publication of this no doubt brutal exposé.

He seemed furious when the former Mirror editor Roy Greenslade, professor of journalism at City University and MediaGuardian blogger, told the jury Desmond had a worse reputation than any newspaper proprietor since the second world war, including Robert Maxwell.

As Greenslade expanded on this theory, Desmond gripped the table in front of him tightly, and his wife whispered: “Are you OK?” Maxwell and Desmond have at least one thing in common: Maxwell fought a court battle to block Bower’s first book about him, although the late Mirror proprietor failed in the end, and the publicity of the case merely fuelled sales.

It is also a sweet victory for those who have been on the receiving end of Desmond’s volcanic temper over the years, such as Ted Young, a former executive editor of the Express, whom Desmond is said to have punched in the stomach in full view of the newsroom in 2004.

Young, now editor of the freesheet London Lite, was in court this week with his family to hear the closing speeches. Rumours circulated that he was due to give evidence for Bower and would finally be able to talk openly about being punched ‑ he signed a gagging clause when accepting a substantial payout for the attack.

Despite rumours of Desmond’s interfering style circulating in the newspaper industry and beyond, Desmond insisted under oath that he never interfered in editorial policy. He insisted that newspaper proprietors never meddle in editorial matters. “It’s not the way it works. You do not instruct or order your editors or journalists to write features about people you know. It does not happen,” he said.