Peter Burden » High Court

Les Hinton in Court

Peter — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:19:48 +0000

Earlier this week, the Chief Executive Officer of New York based Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal was sitting in a London Court room listening to proceedings in a claim being made against the News of the World over tacky (and illegal) news-gathering practices. Why on earth, you might ask, would this very high-ranking US media executive care whether or not a private investigator from Cheam had hacked into the voice-mail of British football agent, Skylet Andrew?

Answer: Because that executive is Les Hinton, former Executive Chairman of News International in London, at the time when two men were caught and jailed for phone-hacking, of which, he claimed at the time and since to the Commons CMS Committee, that he, the editor Andy Coulson, and every other executive and senior journalist at the paper had absolutely no knowledge.

Now that it’s clear that dozens of senior staff and employees of the paper not only had knowledge of what the ‘one rogue journalist’ was doing, but were all busy doing it themselves, it begins to look as if perhaps Les did know more than he was admitting, perhaps even to the extent that he could be deemed complicit – even a co-conspirator in plans to invade the voice-mails of hundreds, possibly thousands, of targets deemed newsworthy by the paper.

As current head of a newspaper which is the most illustrious in the News Corp stable and is also Rupert Murdoch’s most cherished possession, one can imagine that there is serious pressure on Hinton not to be shown to be party to such sordid little crimes. That was why he is taking such an interest in this and no doubt all the dozens of other cases which are ranged up against the News of the World by those seeking recompense for the paper’s criminal violation of their right to privacy.

Best of Luck, Les!

Will Nicola See It Through?

Peter — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 16:57:41 +0000

The last time a High Court judge ordered Glenn Mulcaire and the Met to produce disclosures about their part in the Coulson/Screws phone-hacking saga, they were let off the hook when Max Clifford, whose lawyers had asked for them, accepted the tainted Murdoch shilling (and the rest) and dropped his claim.

If his assistant, Nicola Phillips, now suing the Screws for the same thing, sees it through and it is confirmed that Ian Edmondson, senior news editor under Andy Coulson, specifically ordered the targeting of her voice-mail, the Screws and Coulson and, by extension, the Prime Minister will have a lot of egg on their visages. However, the judge is unlikely to award her more than a miserable £20K – £30k for the personal affront of having her voice-mails recorded on the paper’s behalf by Glenn Mulcaire.

But past events suggest that the Screws will make her a much larger offer. We can only hope that she has the principles, the bollocks and enough collateral support to see the case through, because I’m not so sure that George Galloway will when his case reaches this stage.

The Screws may hurl purses of gold at Max Clifford, to stop him asking embarrassing questions……

Peter — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 18:41:02 +0000

Tomorrow, Thursday 18th, Max Clifford’s lawyers were due in the High Court to request disclosure by the Metropolitan Police of all documents seized by them as they raided the offices of Screws’ investigator, Glenn Mulcaire when they arrested him in Aug 2006.
BUT, the hearing is not now listed.
Nor has the paper complied with an order in the High Court to disclose (by earlier this week) the terms of their agreement with Gordon Taylor when they gave him £700k+ after he pursued them for invasion of privacy by hacking his phones (although they still deny anyone in the paper knew). Nor has co-defendant, Glenn Mulcaire, as ordered by the court, disclosed the names of the paper’s management who ordered him to hack into Clifford’s voicemail (for which he has already been convicted.)
Could it be that the Screws would rather sign a very large cheque then reveal precisely who in the paper knew about the extensive phone hacking that’s come to light? After all….. how much can it be worth to avoid the risk of former editors going to jail for conspiring to offend under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000)?
And they’d have to pay Max Clifford a great deal more than the Court would award to make him drop a claim which he’s looking forward to pursuing.

Just as alarming is the demeanour of the Met, who seem determined not to assist anyone in establishing the truth, including the Commons CMS Committee. To say that Asst. Commissioner John Yates was economical with the truth when being questioned by the committee, would be to put it politely.
AND NOW… after all the rubbish press – the ShagRags and Arse-Wipers – have said they were cleaning up their act in the wake of the Screws’ blatant misbehaviour, someone’s been at it again. A Certain Footballer’s former lover has been told officially within the last fortnight that her voicemail and that of sympathetic friends have been accessed …….

WAS IT THE SCREWS, AGAIN?
Watch out for stories this Sunday with signs of phone hacking (as well as the usual hackery).
I hope to reveal more soon……..

In the High Court: Clifford:3 – Screws:0

Peter — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:53:42 +0000

Max Clifford’s legal team, barrister Jeremy Reed, and solicitor Charlotte Harris (bright and sexy in six inch heels) on Wednesday gave the News of the World a good trouncing in the first skirmish of a High Court battle over the paper’s (one is supposed to say “alleged”) raid on the formidable publicist’s voicemail. This represents another step closer to the truth, which the paper has been desperately trying to hide, about the way their journalists have been systemically, and with the full knowledge of management, breaking the law to discover personal details of celebrities and thereby create invasive, damaging stories about them which are of no public interest. Significantly, so far, only the Guardian has chosen to report this result.
Clifford’s lawyers had asked for and were granted by Mr Justice Vos three specific orders for disclosure – despite the Screws’ peevish objections.
       First, they required Glenn Mulcaire, the investigator responsible for accessing Clifford’s voicemails, to disclose which individual or individuals (editor at the time: slippery spinner, Andy Coulson) asked/ suggested/ ordered him to perform this illegal act, which was included in his conviciton after he pleaded guilty 3 years ago to hacking into the Royal Household phones.
       Mulcaire, second defendant, has also already admitted Max Clifford’s claim, but, as his counsel explained, the father of five children under 16 is out of work (having made known his intention not to return to the snooping game) and living on job-seekers’ allowance. Even taking that with a hefty helping of sodium chloride, the judge might well have asked who was paying his legal bills, and how he would pay any damages awarded against him. But then, it’s not inconceivable that the paper is picking up these tabs – especially if it was they who got him into trouble in the first place by pressurising him to do what he did. If this is so, though, it would undoubtedly make some people think that the way he frames his responses might be influenced by News Group’s support. The paper’s bosses would probably like him to say that he was on a fishing expedition on his own account, and luckily stumbled across messages left by (and the mobile nos. of) several of Mr C’s hapless, high profile clients, and passed them to the lucky hacks without saying where or how he found them.
       He’s also been asked to reveal to whom he passed the contents of any voicemails acquired by him from this source, and to name anyone whom he might have instructed on how to access the voicemails themselves. The judge accepted the absolute necessity of this, and ordered that this information be made available to the claimants within 14 days.

Clifford’s counsel also requested that the News of the World release details of the secret settlement they reached out of court with Professional Footballers’ Association boss, Gordon Taylor for invading his privacy by accessing his voicemails (to which Mulcaire had also pleaded guilty). And the court was treated to the strange sight of Taylors’ brief, Manual Barker standing alongside counsel for the Screws, who only last year had to pay Taylor £700k+ for their crimes. Now both parties were intent – for their differing reasons – on not letting the public see what they had agreed. The judge sensibly granted that while private details of Gordon Taylor’s messages which the paper had illegally acquired should remain secret, the terms and conditions and, significantly – the sums paid by the paper in recompense should be released to the claimant’s lawyers under strict terms of confidentiality.
Thirdly he ordered that the Information Commissioner’s Office should be allowed to release (which they have asserted they are happy to do) all data, files and documents accumulated during their investigation into illicit information gathering which resulted in the 2006 report, What Price Privacy, specifically those relating to News of the World journalists. The Screws claimed this was irrelevant, because it contained no information on phone hacking; Clifford’s lawyers said it would help to establish that there was an endemic culture of illegal information gathering at the newspaper, and how phone hacking was a natural extension of the activities in which they’d been engaged for years.

Next time….
Clifford asks the Metropolitan Police to release the stack of documents they took from Mulcaire’s office when they arrested him in August 2006.