Trinity Mirror may face corporate charges over alleged phone hacking
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Version 0 of 1. Trinity Mirror is facing a possible corporate prosecution over allegations of industrial scale phone hacking at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and the People, the high court in London has heard. The newspaper group is a “co-operating suspect” in the Metropolitan police’s Operation Golding investigation into voicemail interception at the three tabloids, the court was told on Friday. The development leaves Trinity Mirror fighting legal battles on two fronts after it emerged that around 40 celebrities, including the actors Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant, have filed damages claims against the publisher since last week. The possibility of corporate charges emerged at the civil trial brought by eight victims of phone hacking, including the actor Sadie Frost, against the Trinity Mirror-owned subsidiary Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN). Matthew Nicklin QC, counsel for MGN, told the judge, Mr Justice Mann, the newspaper group was being treated as a “co-operating suspect” in the ongoing police inquiry. The judge then asked Nicklin: “Your client, the newspaper company, are being treated by the police as themselves a suspect and vulnerable to criminal prosecution?” Nicklin replied: “Correct.” He described Trinity Mirror’s role in the trial as a “dual one in relation to cooperating with the Metropolitan police service” and advising MGN. The newspaper group may have to double its £12m compensation fund after it emerged that 60 to 100 individuals are poised to file damages claims following the conclusion of the trial. In September 2013, Trinity Mirror announced to the London Stock Exchange that it had been placed under formal investigation over phone hacking and added: “The group does not accept wrongdoing within its business and takes these allegations seriously.” However, a year later the company made its first public admission over voicemail interceptions when it apologised and agreed to pay compensation to four claimants. At the beginning of the high court trial, MGN admitted 99 articles about eight individuals would not have been published but for phone hacking. Earlier on Friday, a former Daily Mirror journalist, James Hipwell, told the court he stood by his claim that phone hacking was seen as a “bog-standard journalistic tool” on the paper’s showbiz desk in 1999 and 2000. Under cross-examination by Nicklin, Hipwell denied he was giving evidence as the “ultimate payback” because he was sacked in February 2000 for being involved in a share-tipping scandal for which he was later imprisoned. Hipwell said he was “merely describing my experience of working for Trinity Mirror and seeing phone hacking happening around me while I was there”. He added: “I think it’s the responsible thing to do more than 15 years later and I’m happy I’ve done it.” In his witness statement, Hipwell said phone hacking at the Daily Mirror had “started in earnest by mid-1999 and was rife on the showbusiness desk from that time until I left the paper in February of the following year”. He added: “While it would have been hard to conceal it from me given my proximity to the showbusiness desk, the fact that staff on that desk were regularly hacking the telephones of celebrities was barely concealed at all. I certainly never saw anyone display any moral qualms about doing it”. Earlier on Friday, the actor Sadie Frost revealed that she had asked close relatives, including her mother, to sign confidentiality agreements because she suspected them of leaking stories to the tabloids. She described the move as very embarrassing but said she was driven to it by a torrent of press scrutiny of every aspect of her private life. Frost is one of eight claimants asking Mann to assess the scale of hacking at the titles and decide the level of damages payable to them by MGN. It is thought that some of the claims may reach six figures, with legal sources pointing to the £100,000 payout awarded to Sienna Miller, an actor, over phone hacking by the News of the World. Miller’s compensation sum was based on four articles admitted to be the product of phone hacking. In Frost’s case, for example, MGN has admitted that 27 articles were gleaned from listening to her private voicemails. David Sherborne, barrister for the victims, has asked the judge to award a separate payment for each published article. Others that have come forward to sue MGN since the trial began last week include Everton football club’s owner, Bill Kenwright, TV stars Suzanne Shaw, Nigel Havers and John Leslie, and the interior designers Kelly Hoppen and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. |