Courts rule Tommy Sheridan due £176,000 in interest

Tommy Sheridan won the defamation case in 2006 but was later found guilty of perjury

Former MSP Tommy Sheridan has won a legal battle to secure an extra £176,000 payment from the publishers of the now defunct News of the World.

The former Scottish Socialist Party leader won a £200,000 defamation action against the newspaper in August, 2006.

Lawyers for convicted perjurer Sheridan had argued he was due interest on the damages award after it was held up by over a decade.

The claim was rejected by the courts in March but Sheridan has won on appeal.

He won the defamation action after the News of the World made lurid claims about his private life.

The ex-politician - who was jailed in 2011 for committing perjury during the defamation action - said he was due a second payout from News Group Newspapers after the phone-hacking row.

'Entitled to interest'

But in a Court of Session ruling in March, Lord Turnbull - who criticised the "utterly reprehensible" conduct of the News of the World - refused to grant the extra payment to Sheridan.

Now three civil appeal judges have overturned Lord Turnbull's decision after an appeal from Sheridan's lawyers.

In a written judgement issued at the Court of Session, judges Lord Carloway, Lord Menzies and Lord Brodie, concluded that their colleague misinterpreted the law surrounding payments.

It stated: "There is no difficulty at all in understanding that a person who is defamed and to whom a jury awarded £200,000 as damages for the effect on his reputation such as it may have been entitled to interest on that sum from on or about the date of the award until payment as compensation for the loss of use of that money".

The three judges ruled that annual interest of 8% should be applied to the £200,000 damages award from its initial award in August 2006 to when the award was eventually paid, which was May last year.