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Sorrell’s court trial ends in bitter victory

Posted in General, Marketing March 30th, 2007 by Arif Durrani

After spending 10 days in the High Court, and some £2 million on legal fees, the all too public spat between WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell and former business associates Marco Benatti and Marco Tinelli, rumbled to an unsatisfactory close this week.

For the record, Sir Martin accepted a £120,000 payout for libel and invasion of privacy but was accused of “fleeing the battlefield” before Benatti and Tinelli could take to the witness box.

Since then, the Italians have called the trial “an unnecessary waste of court time and resources” and said they only agreed to the payouts - without admission of liability - so that they could get on with running their FullSix business.

Talking to mad.co.uk today, Sorrell rubbished these claims as “strange” and said they smacked of bad losers “lashing out”. He maintains his settlement, far from being the last option of a man losing in court, equated to record damages in both libel and privacy action.
 
The only thing for certain is the bad taste that remains. Never before have adland’s egos been captured so publicly, and illuminated so cruelly, thanks to a libellous campaign catapulted around the world by the digital age.

I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure who called Sir Martin a “mad dwarf” and Weber a “nympho schizo”, nor can we be sure if Benatti really was frustrated by his “lack of power and authority”, but we’ll always remember the allegations.

The details that emerged in less than two weeks in court shined a spotlight onto a world riddled by greed, self promotion and a playground mentality.

We heard talk of mafia style death threats followed by childlike Christmas presents – Benatti gave Sorrell three books: The Art of War by Sun Tzu, The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli and Carl von Clausewitz’s On War  - Sun Tzu was a famous Japanese general whose book notoriously sets out his views on resourcefulness, cunning, the profit motive, secrecy, speed, surprise, deception and manipulation.

Both sides are now claiming a victory, but the case has only really added more weight to the adage that ‘Nobody really wins except the lawyers’.