Publishers of the former newspaper the News of The World have lost a legal bid to have a retrial in a bid to overturn Tommy Sheridan's defamation case victory.

News Group Newspapers (NGN) wanted to have a re-trial of the 2006 defamation case which Sheridan won as they argued the jury's verdict was unsafe and a new trial was "essential to the justice of the cause".

In the longest defamation trial in Scottish legal history, the former Scottish Socialist Party leader successfully sued NGN at the Court of Session for defamation over a story in the News of The World that alleged he had visited a swingers club in Manchester.

He was later convicted of perjury over evidence he gave under oath at the defamation trial.

Shortly after his defamation victory, the newspaper published secretly recorded video footage of Sheridan admitting to visiting sex clubs.

Three judges -Lady Paton, Lord Drummond Young and Lord McGhie - dismissed NGN's bid as a new jury could yet find that Sheridan "had been defamed".

In a summary of their opinion, the judges stated: "The jurors had heard and seen all the witnesses and the written evidence, and were the judges of the facts, deciding questions of credibility and reliability.

"The jurors would apply the directions in law given by the trial judge. Those directions included an instruction that if the jury found that some (but not all) of the allegations made against Mr Sheridan were proved, they still had to assess whether the unproved and unsubstantiated allegations materially injured Mr Sheridan's reputation.

"Thus it was open to the jury to disbelieve some of Mr Sheridan's evidence, to find certain evidence led on behalf of NGN established, yet still to conclude that Mr Sheridan had been defamed."

Sheridan served just over one year of a three-year sentence for perjury.