Trinity Mirror to pay high-profile phone-hacking victims £1.2m
Trinity Mirror, the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People, is to pay eight phone-hacking victims a combined total of £1.2m as the result of a high court ruling.
The high court has awarded footballer Paul Gascoigne £188,250 from the Trinity Mirror after he claimed that intimate coverage of his personal life made him paranoid and drove him to alcoholism between 2000 and 2010.
Also among those who received a share of the £1.2m compensation were actors Sadie Frost, Shobna Gulati, Lucy Taggart and Shane Richie, BBC executive Alan Yentob, flight attendant Lauren Alcorn and TV producer Robert Ashworth.
Mr Justice Mann ordered “very substantial” compensation payments after Trinity Mirror admitted to publishing more than 100 articles about the claimants built on information gathered from phone hacking operations.
In response to the ruling, Trinity Mirror issued a statement: "Our subsidiary MGN Limited has already accepted that it should pay appropriate compensation to individuals who were the target of phone hacking.
"However, our initial view of the lengthy judgment is that the basis used for calculating damages is incorrect and we are therefore considering whether to seek permission to appeal."
"As the legal process has taken longer and the costs of settling claims is likely to be higher than previously anticipated we are increasing our provision to deal with matters arising from phone hacking by £16m. This is in addition to the £12m provided in 2014."
This comes after the Trinity Mirror admitted legal liability in a further four cases of the alleged interception of voicemails.
Three of Trinity Mirror’s newspaper titles are also the subject of a criminal investigation as a result of the voicemail interceptions.