Trinity Mirror is facing a legal bill that could soar into millions of pounds after around 40 celebrities, including the actors Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley, filed phone-hacking claims in the past fortnight.
The newspaper group may have to double its £12m compensation fund to deal with the fallout from the phone-hacking trial at the high court in London.
Television personalities including Amanda Holden, Denise Van Outen and Rhys Ifans have issued legal claims against the Daily Mirror publisher, Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), since the trial began last Monday.
The BBC executive Peter Salmon and his wife, Last Tango In Halifax star Sarah Lancashire, are also among the claimants.
The high court has heard that between 60 and 100 well-known individuals are poised to sue MGN following the conclusion of a trial brought by eight phone-hacking victims.
The trial before Mr Justice Mann has heard that phone hacking was rife at the three MGN titles – the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and the People – from about 1999-2009.
The judge is being asked to assess the scale of phone hacking at the titles and decide the level of damages to award the claimants, including the actor Sadie Frost and the ex-footballer Paul Gascoigne.
It is thought that some of the claims may reach six figures, with legal sources pointing to the £100,000 payout awarded to the actor Sienna Miller over phone hacking by the News of the World.
Miller’s compensation sum was based on four articles admitted to be the product of phone hacking.
In Frost’s case, for example, MGN has admitted that 27 articles were gleaned from listening to her private voicemails.
David Sherborne, the barrister for the victims, has asked the judge to award a separate payment for each published article.
Others that have come forward to sue MGN since the trial began last week include the Everton football club owner Bill Kenwright, TV stars Suzanne Shaw, Nigel Havers, John Leslie and the interior designers Kelly Hoppen and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.
