Hugh Grant refused permission to sue The Sun newspaper over phone hacking allegations
Hugh Grant won’t be allowed to sue The Sun newspaper over phone hacking allegations in new Supreme Court ruling
Hugh Grant has been denied permission to sue The Sun newspaper for allegedly hacking into his phone.
The actor, a leading supporter of the anti-tabloid press campaign group Hacked Off, had filed a lawsuit alleging that Sun journalists had access to voice messages on his mobile phone.
But a Supreme Court judge ruled yesterday that Grant’s claim had been overdue after he became aware of potentially unlawful hacking activity and could not be considered.
Mr Justice Fancourt allowed the 62-year-old actor to proceed with legal claims against The Sun over other allegations of ‘unlawful information gathering’.
Grant alleges that the paper’s journalists hired private investigators to seek information on him through such activities as “wire tapping, eavesdropping, blagging,” and says three burglaries were committed during an illegal search for stories.
Hugh Grant has been denied permission to sue The Sun newspaper for allegedly hacking into his phone
News Group Newspapers (NGN), owner of The Sun, denies the allegations.
Since the outbreak of the phone hacking scandal, NGN has dealt with several claims related to News of the World, which shut down in 2011, but has consistently denied that any unlawful information gathering took place at The Sun. One of the NGN settlements on News of the World was with Grant.
Fawlty Towers star John Cleese also appeared at the Supreme Court yesterday in Prince Harry’s hacking case against the publishers of the Daily Mirror.
Cleese, 83, arrived at court in London at the same time as Graham Johnson, a convicted phone hacker.
The actor, who is not involved in the case, smiled at photographers as he walked into the building and said, “Hello, hello, hello.”
He watched the proceedings from the public gallery as Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne tried to convince the judge to let him introduce three late witnesses.
Cleese (right), 83, arrived at court in London at the same time as Graham Johnson (left), a convicted phone hacker
Mr Justice Fancourt rejected the application, saying it would not be ‘in the interests of the fairness of the trial as a whole’.
Monty Python star Cleese is a fierce opponent of the tabloid press and once threatened to leave Britain, partly because of his ‘beef’ with newspapers.
He has met with Prince Harry’s witnesses, including Mr Johnson, a former journalist who was given a suspended sentence for phone hacking and is now working with Harry’s lawyers. The Mirror denies the claims against it.