Hugh Grant refused permission to sue The Sun newspaper over phone hacking allegations
Hugh Grant denied permission to sue The Sun newspaper over phone hacking allegations in new High Court ruling
Hugh Grant has been denied permission to sue The Sun newspaper for allegedly hacking into his phone.
The actor, a key supporter of the anti-tabloid campaign group Hacked Off, had launched a legal action, alleging that Sun journalists accessed the voicemails on his mobile phone.
But a High Court judge ruled yesterday that Grant’s claim was launched too long after he became aware of potentially illegal hacking activity and could not be considered.
Judge Fancourt allowed the 62-year-old actor to pursue legal claims against The Sun over other allegations of “illegal information gathering”.
Grant claims that the newspaper’s journalists hired private investigators to seek information on him through activities including ‘wiretapping, wiretapping, blagging’, and says three robberies were committed in 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 claims.
NGN has settled several claims since the wiretapping scandal broke in connection with the News of the World, which shut down in 2011, but has consistently denied that The Sun collected illegal information. One of NGN’s deals on the News of the World was with Grant.
Also yesterday in High Court, Fawlty Towers star John Cleese appeared in Prince Harry’s hacking case against the editors of the Daily Mirror.
Cleese, 83, arrived at the London court at the same time as Graham Johnson, a convicted hacker.
The actor, who is not involved in the case, smiled at photographers as he entered the building saying, “Hello, hello, hello.”
He watched the proceedings from the public gallery as Harry’s lawyer, David Sherborne, tried to convince the judge to allow him to present three late witnesses.
John Cleese (right), 83, arrived at the London court at the same time as Graham Johnson (left), a convicted phone hacker.
Judge Fancourt rejected the request, saying it would not be “in the interest of the fairness of the trial as a whole”.
Monty Python star Cleese is a vehement opponent of the tabloid press, once threatening to leave Britain partly because of his ‘beef’ with the newspapers.
He has been meeting with Prince Harry’s witnesses, including Johnson, a former journalist who received a suspended sentence for hacking phones and is now working with Harry’s lawyers. The Mirror denies the claims against him.
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