Confidential information
The Duke of Sussex and others v Mgn Ltd [2023] EWHC 3217 (Ch), [2023] All ER (D) 94 (Dec)
The Chancery Division made rulings concerning the use of voice mail interference (VMI) and unlawful information gathering (UIG). The claimants were four of many claimants in the fourth wave of the Mirror Newspapers hacking litigation, including the Duke of Sussex. The litigation arose from allegations of phone hacking made by previous claimants against journalists, managers and editors of the three national Mirror Group newspapers (The Mirror, The Sunday Mirror and The People) and involved private investigators or agencies instructed by them. The allegations included the hacking of the claimants’ and their identified associates’ mobile telephones. The court held that VMI had remained an important tool of the kind of journalism that was being practised at all three newspapers up to and to a limited extent even during the Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking, and it had been fed by extensive UIG. Although there had been VMI and UIG in all four cases, the cases of an actor who had appeared
