Berlin — On Friday, the German magazine Bunte was ordered to pay €50,000 in damages ($54,780) plus legal fees to Michael Schumacher for claiming the former five-time Formula One world champion could walk again. In December 2015, two years after Schumacher sustained serious head injuries in a skiing accident, Bunte ran the headline "It’s more than a Christmas miracle — Michael Schumacher can walk again", but the media chamber of Hamburg’s regional court found the article infringed Schumacher’s privacy and ordered the magazine to pay compensation plus 65% of his legal costs. "The chamber assumes that this statement is false," said Judge Simone Kaefer. The verdict was based on the fact that Schumacher cannot currently walk and thus could not have done so at the time the article was printed. Schumacher’s family had sought damages of €100,000 but the court, in mitigation, determined that the magazine had researched and sourced the article. Schumacher has not appeared in public since the ...
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