The Taiwan High Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal filed by Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi (章子怡) in a defamation case against a Taiwanese magazine, saying that the magazine had cited another publication in its story.
It was the second time that the court upheld a ruling of the Shilin District Court on the matter, which arose from a Next Magazine story in 2012 that said several Chinese officials had paid to have sex with Zhang.
Later that year, Zhang filed a defamation lawsuit against two reporters and an editor at Next Magazine, seeking NT$1.65 million (US$53,007 at the current exchange rate) in damages and a public apology from the magazine.
However, in April 2015, the Shilin District Court ruled against Zhang, saying that the Next Magazine story had cited a report on Boxun News, an overseas Chinese community Web site.
The district court also said Next Magazine reporters had tried unsuccessfully to contact Zhang before publishing the story and that the magazine had since issued an apology to her.
In December 2015, Zhang filed an appeal with the High Court, which upheld the lower court’s ruling.
The High Court’s rejection of her second appeal is not the final recourse for Zhang, as she can still appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
The actress, who is best known for her lead role in Ang Lee’s (李安) hit film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍), in December 2013 reached a confidential settlement in a defamation suit against Boxun News after the Web site alleged that she had received NT$3.2 billion in payments over a 10-year period to have sex with former Chinese minister of commerce Bo Xilai (薄熙來) and several other Chinese officials.
The Web site also retracted that story, saying the “false reports about Zhang Ziyi should never have been published.”
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