Settlement amount for 18 victims, out of a possible 800, reaches well above $1 million.
Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has agreed to pay substantial damages to several dozen high-profile victims of phone and email hacking, and lawyers for those victims said on Thursday that they had seen documents showing that senior managers not only knew about the hacking but also lied about it and destroyed evidence as part of a cover-up.
The High Court hearing on Thursday at which the settlements were detailed was a humiliating occasion for Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN), which published the now-defunct tabloid at the heart of the hacking scandal, The News of the World. In a courtroom so jammed with lawyers, victims and members of the news media that some people had to sit on the floor, News Group’s lawyer, Michael Silverleaf, repeatedly expressed the company’s “sincere apologies” for “the damage, as well as the distress” caused to victim after victim.
The list of 37 victims settling with the company included politicians, celebrities, actors and sports figures, as well as people in their inner circles — employees, spouses, lovers. It is unclear how much News Group will end up having to pay after all the cases are finally settled, but the total bill for the 18 victims whose settlement details were disclosed Thursday reaches well above $1 million. According to the police, there may be as many as 800 victims.
Perhaps two dozen suits are pending. News Group says it is eager to settle all the cases, but it was not clear, during extensive discussions in court, that it was able to placate all those who have brought claims.
The settlements disclosed include those of the actor Jude Law, who received £130,000, about $200,000; Sadie Frost, his ex-wife, who received $77,000; Ben Jackson, his assistant, who received $61,000; Gavin Henson, a Welsh rugby star, who also received $61,000; and Denis MacShane, a member of Parliament, who received $50,000.
In each case, News Group also agreed to pay the complainant’s legal costs, any of which could easily have run into six figures. One complainant, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that his came to more than $300,000 — an amount that does not include News International’s fees.
But perhaps more damaging to the company than the financial penalties was a statement from lawyers for the hacking victims.
“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 statement said, referring to News Group Newspapers.
The lawyers also said they had obtained, through nine disclosure orders from the court, “documents relating to the nature and scale of the conspiracy, a cover-up and the destruction of evidence/email archives by News Group.”
In a statement, News International, the British newspaper arm of Murdoch’s global empire and the parent company of News Group, said it had “made no admission as part of these settlements that directors or senior employees knew about the wrongdoing by NGN or sought to conceal it.” It added, “However, for the purpose of reaching these settlements only, NGN agreed that the damages to be paid to claimants should be assessed as if this was the case.”
Lawyers said, however, that it was unlikely that the company would have agreed to calculate settlements on the basis that there was a cover-up if there were in fact no cover-up.
Until the end of 2010, News International denied that The News of the World engaged in any phone hacking and vehemently vowed to fight any legal claims. After that, it admitted that some of its reporters and editors knew about the hacking. Now it has acknowledged that hacking was pervasive, and with hundreds of potential victims still left to deal with, it recently set up a web page where people who believe their phones were hacked can file claims electronically. More than 20 people have been arrested on suspicion of phone hacking or illegally paying the police for information. No criminal charges have been filed yet.
Steven Barnett, a professor of communications at the University of Westminster, said in a statement that the latest disclosures represented “a devastating indictment not only of the corrupt journalistic practices at The News of the World but of the calculated cover-up which apparently followed.”
The cases also extended beyond the one newspaper. Law said he had been hacked not only by The News of the World but also by The Sun, another Murdoch tabloid.
The hearing took on an almost ritualistic tone as each victim’s statement, its wording carefully vetted and approved by News Group, was read out to the court. Each reading was immediately followed by Silverleaf’s confirmation of the victim’s account and a statement that the company acknowledged “that the information should never have been obtained or used in this manner.”
News Group also admitted outright for the first time that it had hacked into an email account in pursuit of a story. Silverleaf confirmed the account of Christopher Shipman, the son of a notorious British serial killer, that The News of the World had “unlawfully obtained the confidential access to details to the claimant’s email account, including his password, and had accessed his inbox.”
The victims’ statements had similar narrative arcs. At some point in the early or mid-2000’s, most said, they had become suspicious about personal information that was appearing in The News of the World. Some said they experienced odd problems with their voice mail, like being unable to gain access to it because it was busy.
Then, the victims said, they were shown evidence by the police of what The News of the World had done. Law’s statement said the police had played him messages he had left for his children’s nanny five years earlier.
The statements detail the victims’ distress and confusion. “Although the articles would often only contain a small piece of accurate information,” said Mark Thomson, the lawyer for Frost, Law’s ex-wife, it was enough for Frost “to suspect everyone close to her and for the claimant and Law to suspect each other.”
Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for The News of the World, was News Group’s co-defendant in the lawsuits. But his lawyer said Mulcaire, who was jailed for phone hacking in 2007 and faces new criminal charges, had not admitted to wrongdoing.
Even for some of those who had settled, the matter was not over. “This is still only Act Four, Scene Four, of a five-act play,” said Chris Bryant, a member of Parliament, who was awarded about $46,000 after his phone was hacked.
Tamsin Allen, a lawyer representing a number of the victims, said that it was their perseverance, even when News Group was aggressively denying that it had ever hacked anyone, that had led to the settlement.
“It is a credit to them, the claimants, that they kept on,” she said, “because we have now discovered a massive conspiracy involving criminal activity and a cover-up.”
Alan Cowell contributed reporting
© 2012 The New York Times News Service
