Polanski wins suit against Vanity Fair

Filmmaker Roman Polanski on Friday won his libel suit against Vanity Fair magazine over an article that accused him of propositioning a woman while on the way to the 1969 funeral of his murdered wife, Sharon Tate.

The Academy Award-winning director was awarded the British equivalent of about $87,000 in damages plus court costs. The jury of nine men and three women took 4 1/2 hours to reach a unanimous verdict at London’s High Court.

“It goes without saying that, whilst the whole episode is a sad one, I am obviously pleased with the jury’s verdict today,” Polanski, 71, said in a statement.

Polanski, the director of “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Chinatown,” sued Vanity Fair’s publisher over a 2002 article that accused him of propositioning a woman while on the way to the funeral of Tate, who was killed by followers of Charles Manson. Conde Nast is based in New York, but libel actions concerning the international media are often brought in British courts because they are considered friendlier to claimants than U.S. courts.

Conde Nast accepted that the alleged incident at Elaine’s restaurant in Manhattan did not happen before Tate’s funeral but alleged that it happened about two weeks later.

Polanski, who won an Oscar in 2003 for the Holocaust drama “The Pianist,” has lived in France since fleeing child-sex charges in the United States in 1978. He was unwilling to come to Britain for fear of extradition, but he was allowed to testify by video.

After the verdict, Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter said he found it “outrageous that this story is considered defamatory, given the fact that Mr. Polanski cannot be here because he slept with a 13-year-old girl a quarter of a century ago.”