Mann J awards 'very substantial' damages to Claimants
Mr Justice Mann handed down his judgment in the case of Gulati v MGN Ltd this morning, following a 4-week trial to assess damages in March 2015. The claims in misuse of private information related to phone-hacking carried out at the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the People from 1999 to 2010. Mann J awarded a cumulative total of £1.2m to the eight claimants, ranging from £260,250 (to Sadie Frost) to £72,500 (to Lauren Alcorn). In his judgment – which is over 200 pages long – Mann J found that phone hacking was ‘widespread, institutionalised and long standing’. He found that privacy damages should be awarded to reflect the infringement of the Claimants’ privacy rights as well as to compensate the Claimants for injury to their feelings.
Decisions on costs and consequential matters have been adjourned to a further hearing.
The awards were as follows:
Sadie Frost £260,250
Robert Ashworth £201,250
Paul Gascogine £188,250
Lucy Taggart £157,250
Shane Richie £155,000
Shobna Gulati £117,500
Alan Yentob £85,000
Lauren Alcorn £72,500
5RB’s David Sherborne appeared for the Claimants, and Matthew Nicklin QC and Alexandra Marzec (also from 5RB) appeared for the Defendants.
The judgment can be found here or in the file below.