Phone Hacking: Ex-England Coach Eriksson sues Mirror

Former England coach, Sven-Goran Eriksson and three others have sued the publisher of Daily Mirror over alleged phone hacking.

The four civil claims were filed against Mirror Group Newspapers, (MGN), at the high court in London yesterday in the first formal move for damages from any company outside Rupert Murdoch’s News International.

The allegation by former England football manager, Eriksson relates to the Daily Mirror when Piers Morgan was editor. Morgan has repeatedly denied knowledge of phone hacking at the title but might be called by the court to answer some questions. Morgan, is now a primetime TV host on CNN in the United States.

A spokesman for the Mirror Group said: “We have no comment; we are unaware action has been taken at the high court.”

The complainants claims were filed by the solicitor Mark Lewis on behalf of Eriksson, former footballer Garry Flitcroft, actor Shobna Gulati and Abbie Gibson, former nanny to David and Victoria Beckham.
The claims lodged on behalf of Gulati, Gibson and Flitcroft, allege phone hacking at either the Sunday Mirror or the People.
MGN faced accusations of hacking during evidence to Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into press standards, but has always said: “All our journalists work within the criminal law and the PCC [Press Complaints Commission] code of conduct and we have seen no evidence to suggest otherwise.”

Morgan edited the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004. He gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry in December when he repeatedly denied any knowledge of illegal newsgathering techniques at the tabloid. But in May, BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman claimed to the inquiry that Morgan had personally shown him how to illicitly intercept voicemail messages at a lunch in September 2002.

Paxman claimed that at the same lunch Morgan had teased Ulrika Jonsson about the details of a private conversation she had had with Erikson, who was England manager at the time.

The four claims accuse the newspapers of a “breach of confidence and misuse of private information” relating to the “interception and/or misuse of mobile phone voicemail messages and/or the interception of telephone accounts”.

Former Blackburn Rovers footballer Flitcroft told the Leveson inquiry in November that he had been hounded by tabloid newspapers over an extra-marital affair in 2001. Golati is the actor best known for playing Sunita Alahan in Coronation Street and, previously, Anita in Dinnerladies.

The formal hacking allegations come weeks before Leveson is expected to outline a critical assessment of the ethics of the press in his report to prime minister David Cameron.