Coronation Street actress Shobna Gulati in phone-hacking payout

Photo: Oldham Chronicle

Shobna Gulati

Shaw actress Shobna Gulati has been awarded £117,500 in phone-hacking damages from Mirror Group Newspapers, publisher of the Daily and Sunday Mirror.

Damages totalling nearly £1.25m have been awarded to eight celebrity phone-hacking victims - Alan Yentob, Sadie Frost, Paul Gascoigne, Lucy Taggart, Robert Ashworth, Lauren Alcorn, Shane Richie and Shobna Gulati -  whose phones were hacked by Mirror Group journalists writing celebrity stories.

The judge, Mr Justice Mann, ordered what he described as “very substantial” payouts after considering the scale of intrusion suffered by the eight claimants.

Trinity Mirror admitted at the start of the three-week trial that more than 100 articles about the eight claimants were the result of phone hacking. The civil case is the first of its kind to result in a high court trial.

The payouts dwarf those paid by News UK, the publisher of the now-defunct News of the World, to phone-hacking victims. In contrast to those payouts, the Trinity Mirror damages were decided by a high court judge after the victims refused to settle out of court.

Trinity Mirror, which owns Mirror Groups Newspapers (MGN), said: "Our initial view of the lengthy judgment is that the basis used for calculating damages is incorrect and we are therefore considering whether to seek permission to appeal."

In February, Trinity Mirror published a "sincere and unreserved" apology for the voice mail interception, saying it "was unlawful and should never have happened".

The company is now facing new phone-hacking damages claims from more than 100 high-profile figures - it said it was increasing the amount of money set aside to deal with the legal cases from £12m to £28m.

Trinity Mirror plc is Britain's biggest newspaper group, publishing 240 regional papers, including the Rochdale Observer and the Manchester Evening News, as well as The Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People.