merelygifted:

Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers asked for litigation to be brought to an end 15 years after scandal broke

The publisher of the News of the World has failed in its attempt to force a deadline on potential victims of the phone-hacking scandal to make claims against it.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN), which published the now defunct newspaper as well as the Sun, asked for litigation to be brought to an end 15 years after the scandal broke.

About 1,028 claims have already been settled, plus an additional 358 applications that were made to a compensation scheme run by parent company News International between 2011 and 2016.

But NGN’s lawyers were rebuffed when they argued at a hearing in London that it is time to impose a final deadline on potential victims to file new claims against the organisation.

The failed bid comes as the Sun recorded a loss of £51m last year. NGN spent £49m on legal fees and damages relating to historical phone-hacking allegations in the year to 27 June 2021. This compares with the £80m NGN spent the previous year.

There could be as many as “20,000 to 25,000 potential victims of NGN’s unlawful information gathering” and there should be no cut-off date, lawyers representing a number of victims argued.

David Sherborne, representing the claimant group, said NGN’s application for a final cut-off date was “misconceived”.

He argued that the “vast majority of victims do not know they have a claim due to the intentionally covert nature of NGN’s unlawful information gathering and its deliberate concealment of the same”.  …

You didn’t just hack slebs’ phones, you hacked a murdered girl’s phone, you sick fucks.  Your entire business should have been shut, and all your assets frozen until all your victims receive proper compensation after your spying on them.