Mark Lewis said the claims would be filed in “a few weeks,”
but would not disclose identities of his clients or say precisely when the
papers would be lodged at court.
Lewis represents the family of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl
abducted and murdered by a pedophile in 2002. The revelation a month ago that
her voicemail messages had been accessed by the News of the World while she was
still missing outraged British opinion, and triggered a crisis for Rupert
Murdoch’s News Corp.
The phone hacking scandal centers on allegations that
journalists eavesdropped on private phone messages, bribed police for
information and hacked email accounts.
So far the crisis has centered on Murdoch’s media empire,
leading him to shut down the News of the World tabloid and abandon a bid to
take over British Sky Broadcasting. Several former executives of the newspaper
have been arrested by police investigating the eavesdropping.
But there have also been allegations of hacking by other
newspapers. This week Paul McCartney’s ex-wife, Heather Mills, claimed in a BBC
interview that she was hacked by a Trinity Mirror journalist in 2001.
McCartney said Thursday that he planned to contact police
over the claim.
“I will be talking to them about that,” McCartney told the
US television journalists by videolink from Cincinnati, Ohio.
The BBC did not identify the journalist cited by Mills, but
said it was not Piers Morgan, who was editor of the group’s flagship tabloid,
the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004.
Morgan has repeatedly denied ordering anyone to spy on
voicemails or knowingly publishing stories obtained through hacking.
But in an article published by the Daily Mail in 2006,
Morgan said that he had been played a tape of a message McCartney had left on
Mills’ cell phone in the wake of one of their fights.
“It was heartbreaking,” Morgan wrote. “He sounded lonely,
miserable and desperate, and even sang ‘We Can Work It Out’ into the
answerphone.” Questions over how Morgan came to hear the message have led several
British lawmakers to call on him to return to the UK and explain himself.
Lawmaker John Whittingdale, chairman of a parliamentary
committee that is investigating hacking by the News of the World, said Thursday
that Morgan “absolutely should” come to Britain to answer questions.
Whittingdale said “there is evidence to suggest that other
newspapers were involved in phone hacking” — and that police should
investigate.
Both Trinity Mirror and the publisher of Britain’s Daily
Mail newspaper, keen to stop the scandal spreading to them, have announced
reviews of editorial procedures in the wake of the revelations about the scale
of wrongdoing at the News of the World.
Meanwhile, an activist who hit Murdoch with a shaving foam
pie as the mogul testified to British lawmakers last month was appealing Friday
against a six-week jail sentence.
Jonathan May-Bowles was sentenced Tuesday for assaulting the
80-year-old media tycoon as he gave evidence to the House of Commons Culture,
Media and Sport Committee.
