Rupert Murdoch News Group Newspapers (NGN), which published the most inactive newspaper as well as the Sun, called for the lawsuit to be terminated 15 years after the scandal broke. About 1,028 claims have already been settled, plus an additional 358 claims filed in a compensation program run by parent company News International between 2011 and 2016. But NGN’s lawyers were rejected when they argued at a hearing in London that it was time to impose a deadline on potential victims to make new claims against the organization. The failed bid comes as the Sun posted a 51 51m loss last year. NGN spent 49 49 million on legal fees and damages related to historical telephone breach allegations as of June 27, 2021. This compares with 80 80 million GN spent the previous year. There could be up to “20,000 to 25,000 potential victims of NGN illegal intelligence gathering” and there should be no deadline, lawyers representing some of the victims said. David Sherborne, representing the plaintiffs’ team, said NGN’s request for a final date was a “misunderstanding”. He asserted that his confession had been obtained through torture and that his confession had been obtained through torture. Anthony Hudson QC, for NGN, told the court on Thursday: “We are saying after 15 years of litigation, the settlement and settlement of more than 1,000 claims, the huge use of court time during this period, huge amounts revelation [of evidence] and the huge costs incurred and paid, we suggest that now is the right time to ensure that any claims sought are made within a reasonable time and that the slow flow of evidence – which the plaintiffs approach many more years, probably another decade – it ends “. The lawyer said that about 45 hearings have taken place since 2016, which require about 70 hours of court time and that the legal costs were “excessive”, with the total cost for the third installment of the trial alone reaching almost 35 million pounds. He said the allegations had been made public since the arrest of former News of the World journalist Clive Goodman in 2006 and that it would be “difficult for anyone living in this country to ignore” the phone-breaking scandal. However, ruling Friday, Justice Fancourt said he did not agree with NGN’s report that most of the potential victims already knew they could make a claim. The judge said: “Now more claims are being made that do not arise from an article being published. “Even when the plaintiffs published an article about them, it is not clear that this is how the information was gathered.” He added that the new plaintiffs were still learning about possible claims after appearing as witnesses in other plaintiffs’ cases, but said the court’s position could change in the future. The court heard that there are currently 52 registered claims, with another 436 claims at the pre-action letter stage and another 82 “at the stage”.
