Trinity Mirror is planning to appeal against the decision to award eight phone-hacking victims an average of £150,000 each in civil claims brought against the publisher.
In a regulatory filing published on its corporate website, the company said MGN, the subsidiary that owns the titles, had “already accepted that it should pay appropriate compensation to individuals who were the target of phone hacking”.
It added: “However, we believe that the basis used for calculating damages in the judgment is incorrect and the amounts awarded by the judge are excessive and disproportionate.”
Last month the publisher of the Daily and Sunday Mirror was ordered to pay £1.2m in compensation to victims including the actor Sadie Frost and the former footballer Paul Gascoigne.
The damages are seen as a benchmark for future claims and the publisher is being sued by more than 70 celebrities, sports stars and politicians.
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.
Following the damages award, Trinity Mirror increased the amount set aside to cover the costs of hacking claims to £28m, having estimated it would cost just £4m a year ago.
The filing said there “remains uncertainty as to how matters will progress” and that Trinity will provide further updates if the company’s financial exposure changes.
