Phone hacking damages
January 19, 2012
Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper company announced on Thursday that it had agreed to pay damages to 36 of the 60 plaintiffs in the phone hacking case that has wracked the UK media.
Most of the payments run into tens of thousands of pounds and were going to the celebrity targets of the now-defunct tabloid News of the World. Actor Jude Law was one of the highest paid at 130,000 pounds (155,700 euros, $200,800). News Group Newspapers admitted that 16 articles written about Law between 2003 and 2006 were the result of hacking his phone and putting the 39-year-old actor under "repeated and sustained physical surveillance."
Law's lawyer said on Thursday that the actions of the tabloid and its sister daily paper, The Sun, had resulted in "considerable distress ... distrust and suspicion."
Among the other claimants receiving pay-outs were Law's ex-wife Sadie Frost, former British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, soccer player Ashley Cole, and Sarah Payne, the mother of a murdered girl. Frost received some 50,000 pounds in damages plus legal costs while Prescott, a prominent member of the Labour Party, accepted 40,000 pounds.
In the packed London court Judge Geoffrey Vos read out details of every case, listing the grounds for the settlement. News Group lawyer Michael Silverleaf responded to each by expressing the company's "sincere apologies" for the damage and distress its illegal activity had caused.
Widespread hacking
In July last year Rupert Murdoch was prompted to close the 168-year-old News of the World paper after revelations concerning wide-spread phone-hacking and a number of other illegal activities emerged. For years the company claimed that the hacking of voicemails had not been sanctioned by management and was carried out by individual rogue reporters.
Yet lawyers for the victims who received a settlement on Thursday said the agreement was proof that News Group Newspapers had acknowledged that senior management were to blame for wide-scale hacking.
"News Group has agreed to compensation being assessed on the basis that senior employees and directors of NGN knew about the wrongdoing and sought to conceal it by deliberately deceiving investigators and destroying evidence," the lawyers said in a statement.
In the wake of the scandal a government-commissioned inquiry was set up to investigate British media ethics and the extent of its links to police and politicians.
Although Thursday's settlements mark an end to more than half of the phone-hacking lawsuits facing Murdoch's company, the number of victims is believed to be in the hundreds. Earlier settlements were awarded to actress Sienna Miller and the parents of murdered teenager Milly Dowler, who were offered two million pounds in compensation.
Author: Stuart Tiffen, Charlotte Chelsom-Pill (AP, Reuters, AFP)
Editor: Michael Lawton