News Corp could face up to 500 claims in phone-hacking scandal

July 31, 2016

By Talia Ralph

Copies of the last-ever News of The World newspaper are put up for sale at a newsagents in central Manchester on July 10, 2011 in Manchester, England. The paper’s parent company News Corp. could face up to 500 claims related to the phone hacking scandal that closed the paper last year.
Christopher Furlong

News Corp could face up to 500 claims in relation its' former tabloid News of the World's phone hacking scandal, lawyers on both sides estimated, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Michael Silverleaf, a lawyer for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, told a court hearing Friday that "we are dealing with 500 claims, potentially" from people who say that their voicemail messages were intercepted by the now-defunct tabloid newspaper, which shut down last July in the wake of bribery and phone hacking allegations, the Associated Press reported.

So far, around 110 lawsuits have been filed against the company regarding its' illegal reporting techniques, the WSJ reported. News of the World has settled about 60 of those cases, according to the AP, including lawsuits filed by high-profile claimants such as singer Charlotte Church, actor Jude Law, and comedian Steve Coogan.

Church received one of the largest payouts from News Corp, at around $924,360, according to the WSJ.

There are currently about 45 new cases against News of the World scheduled to go to court, including those by soccer star Wayne Rooney and Tony Blair's wife Cherie Blair, the AP reported.

The lawsuit announcements come a day after Andy Coulson — a former News of the World editor and former press chief to UK Prime Minister David Cameron — was arrested and charged with perjury, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. The arrest stems from Coulson's testimony during the perjury and libel trials of former Scottish lawmaker Tommy Sherida.

"At the time I said that nobody was above the law and we expected a rigorous and robust investigation," Aamer Anwar, Sheridan's lawyer throughout the trial, said of Coulson's arrest.

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