Kenzo Tribouillard / AFP ? Getty Images
Dominique Strauss-Kahn leaves Paris' courthouse after a hearing Tuesday on a tell-all penned by an ex-lover.
By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News
French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn lost his bid to have a court ban a kiss-and-tell book by an ex-lover who has described him as a sex-obsessed "half-man, half-pig" -- but he will collect damages.
In a ruling late Tuesday, a judge green-lighted publication of "Beauty and Beast" by Marcelle Iacub, a lawyer and columnist who had a seven-month affair with the former head of the International Monetary Fund, Le Monde reported.
The court agreed to Strauss-Kahn's demand that a disclaimer declaring his privacy had been invaded be included in every copy. It also ordered the author, the publisher and a magazine that printed excerpts to pay him $98,000, the newspaper said.
Hours before his partial victory, Strauss-Kahn appeared in a Paris courtroom to complain of the "horror" of having his love life exposed, The Guardian reported.
Christian Hartmann / Reuters
"Belle et Bete" ("Beauty and Beast") by Marcela Iacub details her seven-month affair with Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
"Is anything allowed in order to make money?" he asked, branding the book a cheap shot against "a man already down on the ground."
The affair chronicled in the book unfolded while Strauss-Kahn was embroiled in scandal over allegations he sexually assaulted a hotel maid in New York. Criminal charges were dropped by prosecutors who questioned the woman's credibility; Strauss-Kahn later settled a civil claim out of court.
Iacub's book, which is due to go on sale Wednesday, doesn't name Strauss-Kahn, but she has said it's about him. Excerpts published in Le Nouvel Observateur -- accompanied by an interview in which she referred to him as "half-man, half-pig" -- are decidedly unflattering.
"You were old, you were fat, you were short and you were ugly," the 48-year-old former mistress wrote, according to the Guardian. "You were macho, you were vulgar, you were insensitive and you were stingy. You were selfish, you were brutal and you had no culture. And I was mad about you."
Strauss-Kahn's lawyers contend he was seduced into a money-making trap and they tried to persuade the court with an email in which Iacub purportedly confessed the romance was a plot cooked up by her co-workers.
Iacub said she didn't remember the email, disavowed its contents and issued a warning to the Socialist leader once touted as presidential material before scandal doomed his career.
"I don't think it's in [Strauss-Kahn's] best interest for me to start searching through my emails," she said, according to London's Daily Telegraph.
Strauss-Kahn, who is under investigation in connection with a French sex ring, had asked for a disclaimer to be printed in every copy of "Beauty and Beast" already distributed, a ban on more copies being printed, and $130,000 in damages.?
As he left the courthouse, he said there was one more thing on his wish-list: "To be left alone."
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