Mirror publisher seeks legal disclosures to prove 61 hacking …

Daily Mirror front page on 28 November 2023

Mirror publisher Reach is hoping that 61 outstanding privacy claims relating to allegations of illegal newsgathering can be thrown out under the six-year time limit rule.

Prince Harry was awarded £140,000 in damages after finding that 15 Mirror group articles about him published in the early 2000s were a result of phone-hacking.

But two other claims filed alongside Harry were thrown out on grounds of time limitation.

Some 61 further claims relating to allegations of phone-hacking from various claimants remain active and could yet go to trial.

Now Reach subsidiary MGN Ltd is seeking disclosure of correspondence involving legal researchers Dan Waddell, Graham Johnson and Evan Harris to prove claimants knew about the allegations complained about more than six years before starting their claims.

The trio have worked extensively on litigation against the publishers of the Mirror, Sun and Mail titles.

The Mail has successfully forced the disclosure of correspondence between claimants and the legal research team which appear to support the publisher’s assertion that claims are out of time.

Disclosures in the Mail case suggest that Johnson used the publication of stories on his website Byline Investigates to create a false “watershed moment” where claimants could say they became aware of illegal newsgathering allegations in order to get around the six-year time limit.

Pre-trial legal argument filed by MGN asserts that the researchers are part of the claimants’ legal team and so should disclose correspondence.

Lawyers for the claimants previously refused to carry out searches or documents held by the three researchers saying “there is no research team” in the case, the MGN document notes.

MGN notes that there are 1,000 entries for Harris and Waddell in the costs bill for hacking litigation against the Mirror publisher and a further 111 references to Johnson.

According to Press Gazette analysis of annual reports, Reach has allocated around £150m of non-recurring costs towards dealing with the legal fallout of phone-hacking at its titles since 2014. This total comprises the estimated final tally for compensation payouts plus legal fees for both sides.

No further costs were allocated by Reach to dealing with historic legal issues in 2024, however the group admitted that the timetable for resolving outstanding claims for phone-hacking and illegal information gathering would extend into 2026.

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