The actress Sienna Miller is reportedly set to launch legal action against the News of the World, Britain’s top-selling newspaper, over their role in the phone hacking scandal which broke recently.
The newspaper, owned by Richard Murdoch’s News Group, was accused of hiring private investigator Glenn Mulcaire to illegally hack into the voicemail messages of selected ‘persons of interest’. He was reportedly paid £100,000 a year for his work. Mulcaire was sent to prison for six months in 2007 after admitting the charges of phone hacking against him.
However, the full list of the aforementioned ‘persons of interest’ to Mulcaire is now being released by Scotland Yard, with many expecting a deluge of high-profile, expensive lawsuits against the paper to follow.
The newspaper has already had to fork out £2 million in out-of-court settlements after publicist Max Clifford and Gordon Taylor, the CEO of the Professional Footballers’ Association, took separate legal action against it after their names were found on Mulcaire’s list.
Actress Sienna Miller is now the latest celebrity figure reportedly set to sue the News of the World, after she discovered that several messages on her voicemail were marked as ‘listened to’ when she hadn’t actually checked them yet.
The overall cost of this scandal to the News of the World – which presumably has some form of professional insurance in place – could be astronomical if all the people on Mulcaire’s list decide to sue.