John Bryan, the man who dated the Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, has launched a legal action against Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
He is seeking $50m (£33m) in damages in a claim for libel and invasion of privacy, according to documents filed with a court in Los Angeles.
Bryan alleges that an undercover News Corp journalist based in London for the News of the World tried to entrap him into obtaining drugs and prostitutes 20 years ago.
In his claim he says this incident occurred some three years after the Daily Mirror had published pictures of him in 1992 sunbathing with Ferguson.
He argues that he was no longer a “figure of any public interest” when two reporters arrived in Los Angeles and offered to finance a hotel he was promoting in return for him procuring cocaine and prostitutes.
The claim states that the main reporter said that he would invest substantial sums of money in Bryan’s hotel venture. Bryan refused the offer.
But, according to Bryan’s claim, the News of the World ran a front page story alleging that he had offered its reporters the drugs and prostitutes.
The claim refers specifically to a BBC Panorama programme broadcast in November 2014 in which the NoW front page was shown on screen.
During that programme, a former NoW photographer claimed the newspaper’s staff had taken part in the failed entrapment plot.
The claim also alleges that News Corp “regularly engaged in criminal activity to manufacture scandals so that it could sell newspapers”.
Bryan is represented jointly by a legal firm in Los Angeles and the London-based Seddons.
News Corp declined to comment.
