• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, April 12, 2017

Libel doesn’t pay, kids! At least in the UK, as the country’s biggest newspaper has recently discovered.

The Daily Mail reportedly agreed to pay Melania Trump, First Lady of the United States, around $2.9 million in damages and court costs along with a formal apology for publishing false allegations that she had previously worked as an escort.

In August of last year, an article published in the Daily Mail repeated claims made by a Slovenian magazine, Suzy, that Melania Trump had worked as an escort in the earlier part of her career, when she was an aspiring model.

The future First Lady initially filed a libel lawsuit in Maryland against the American parent company of Mail Online, Mail Media Inc., along with a liberal blogger based in Maryland who publicized the allegations, but this case was dismissed when a judge ruled that Maryland had no jurisdiction in the matter, despite Trump’s lawyers’ argument that some of the traffic to the Daily Mail’s Web site comes from the state.

The Mailretracted the story after Trump’s first lawsuit, but the First Lady continued the legal battle, filing a second lawsuit against the newspaper publisher in New York, where Mail Media Inc. is based. Trump sought $150 million in damages, due to what her lawyers described as lost business opportunities as a result of the Daily Mail’s libelous statement.

Although the claims of lost business opportunities were later walked back, the libel case continued on the grounds that the story had jeopardized reputation and integrity.

In its apology before the High Court in London, the Daily Mail publishers stated: “We accept that these allegations about Mrs Trump are not true and we retract and withdraw them.”