(London) Hugh Grant received “a huge sum of money” in the out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit that accused the tabloid The Sun of illegally tapping his phone, placing a tracking device on his car and breaking into his home to spy on him, the actor said Wednesday after the deal was announced in court.
The British actor, who, like Prince Harry, sued News Group Newspapers, said Wednesday that he had reluctantly agreed to settle out of court because he could have ended up with a huge legal bill even if he had won his case at trial.
Under civil court rules he would have had to pay legal costs to both parties if he had been awarded one pound less than the offer in the out-of-court settlement.
The settlement amount was not disclosed. Grant said he would donate the money to organizations like Hacked Off, set up after revelations of phone hacking in 2011 brought down News of the World from Rupert Murdoch’s empire and led to a government investigation into illegal press practices.
News Group Newspapers (NGN) said in a statement that it admitted no liability and that the settlement was in the financial best interests of both parties to avoid a costly trial.
Hugh Grant and other plaintiffs alleged that NGN, also a subsidiary of the media empire built by Murdoch, violated their privacy through widespread illegal activities, including hiring private investigators to intercept messages voice calls, tapping phones, tracking cars and using deception to access confidential information, between 1994 and 2016.
Grant said in a witness statement that he was never sure who broke into his fourth-floor apartment in 2011. The door had been ripped off its hinges and the interior looked like a scene of struggle, but nothing was missing in the apartment. However, two days later, The Sun published an article detailing the interior of the apartment and the “signs of a domestic dispute.”
The actor later said he was surprised when a private investigator hired by the tabloid admitted that people working for the newspaper had “burgled” his apartment and placed a tracking device on his car.
Hugh Grant had already settled another lawsuit against Murdoch’s News of the World for hacking his phone.
“As is often the case with completely innocent people, they are offering me a huge sum of money so that this case will not go to court,” the actor wrote on the social network X on Wednesday. Even if every allegation were proven in court, I would still be liable for something approaching £10 million in costs” (C$17.2 million).