UPDATE: During an Oct. 6, 2009, hearing, Madonna's lawyer announced she had accepted "substantial" damages from the Mail's publisher and would donate the money to her Raising Malawi charity.
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No one may be able to accuse Madonna's marriage of being sacred, but the pending divorcée's wedding is an altogether different story.
A London High Court judge today found the British tabloid Mail on Sunday liable for breach of privacy and copyright for publishing stolen photos of Madonna's 2000 wedding to Guy Ritchie.
On Oct. 19, the tabloid published an 11-photo spread of the private snaps, which had never previously been released to the public—thus significantly upping their value and, in turn, the punitive compensation Madonna may receive as a result.
Adding insult to injury, Madonna's attorney, Matthew Nicklin, told the court that the photos of the "wholly private" event had been stolen from the singer's Beverly Hills home by an interior designer who lifted her private photo album and made copies of the offending images before selling them off to the tabloid for roughly $7,500.
The Mail on Sunday, Nicklin said, "makes no attempt to defend what it did" in buying the photos and gave Madonna no warning that they would be appearing on the newsstand.
"She was ambushed, for the simple reason that if the Mail on Sunday had told her what they intended to do, the claimant would have sought and obtained an injunction," he said.
Nicklin also took issue with the fact that the tabloid's circulation was not properly informed of how the copied photos came to appear in the paper.
"Readers were told nothing about the grubby way the photographs had essentially been stolen," he said.
While the judge today sided with Madonna, Nicklin noted that while the Mail on Sunday had essentially admitted its wrongdoing, no formal apology had yet been made to the singer.
The singer has requested nearly $7.5 million in damages from the paper for cheapening her special day, though additional hearings to decide the actual amount of the award will not be held until early next year.