Actor Tom Ellis has accepted substantial damages over false claims in the Sunday Mirror about child maintenance payments for his two daughters.
He also received a public apology at the high court in London over the allegation that he had failed to pay the money to his ex-wife, actor Tamzin Outhwaite.
Ellis's solicitor, Leo Dawkins, told Mr Justice Edis that the action against MGN Ltd, the Trinity Mirror division that publishes the Sunday Mirror, was for defamation and misuse of private information.
The claim arose out of an article published in July, entitled: "Tamzin Outhwaite and ex-husband Tom Ellis in bitter battle over child support payments."
It claimed that Ellis had shirked his responsibility to pay child maintenance by claiming he was too cash strapped to do so, and, said Dawkins, "that this had forced his ex-wife to threaten him with lawyers to ensure that he met his obligations as a father...
"His distress was compounded by the fact that, as is obvious, the financial arrangements regarding his children are private."
Dawkins said: "As the defendant has now admitted, there was also no truth in the story. There had been no such row between my client and his ex-wife, bitter or otherwise.
"Whilst details of the childcare arrangements are, as I say, private, Mr Ellis has in fact never failed to pay his share of child maintenance, nor has he ever claimed that he could not afford to do so."
MGN accepted that the allegations it made were false, had agreed not to repeat them and to pay "substantial damages as well as legal costs".
Gervase de Wilde, counsel for MGN, told the judge: "The defendant hereby apologises to Mr Ellis for the publication of the article complained of and is pleased to have this ability to set the record straight."
Source: PA Media Lawyer
