LONDON: Soccer star David Beckham's sex case involving hooker Irma Nici and a 'mystery brunette' seems to be getting murkier by the day.
American magazine In Touch has filed a federal court motion, due to be heard on February 7, asking Beckham's 16.5million pounds libel action in the US to be thrown out.
The magazine published an article in 2010 that the 35-year-old paid 3,000 pounds-a-night hooker Irma Nici and a 'mystery brunette' for sex at New York's Le Parker Meridian Hotel in August 2007.
Countering that, Beckham's attorneys had filed a 671-page statement denying the magazine's and 26-year-old Nici's allegations point by point.
But under Californian libel laws the ex-England captain must prove that In Touch published its article either knowing it to be untrue or as a deliberate act of malice against him.
Nici's lawyer Paul Jensen, who is counter-suing the LA Galaxy star on her behalf, said, "If his case against the magazine collapses, then his case against my client will also collapse.
"Beckham says he was in a different hotel on the night in question but has not offered to produce any witnesses. In America, where we value freedom of speech, the onus of proof in his libel action is on him," the Daily Star quoted him as saying.
"Whatever happens next month however, our action against him will proceed.
Beckham is deliberately trying to spin this action out so it becomes financially untenable for the other parties to continue," he added.
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