Trinity Mirror loses appeal against phone hacking payout

17th Dec 2015 14:44

(ShareCast News) - Newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror said it had lost its appeal against a £1.2m payout to victims of the phone hacking scandal. Trinity was appealing May's landmark High Court decision from Mr Justice Mann, which awarded a total of £1.2m in damages to eight victims of the firm's phone hacking activities. It is understood actor Sadie Frost alone was awarded £260,250.In dismissing the appeal, Lady Justice Arden said the publisher "cannot expect this court to come to its rescue and find some way of finding the awards to be excessive, when its staff have been responsible for disgraceful conduct with such distressing consequences, and when to boot it is quite unable itself to point to actual awards that it contends are wrong."Following the judgement, Trinity Mirror immediately released a statement, saying it planned to appeal to the Supreme Court."As a consequence of this decision and the continued uncertainty as to how matters will progress, we are increasing our provision to deal with these matters by £13m", the statement said."The board remains confident that the exposures arising from these historic events are manageable and do not undermine the delivery of the group's strategy."The increase would take Trinity Mirror's total provision for fighting the award amount to £41m.Newspaper sales still fading awayIn a later statement, Trinity Mirror also updated the market on its trading following the acquisition of Local World.The takeover was completed on 13 November, and turned the group into Britain's largest single publisher."While the trading environment remains volatile, revenue for the fourth quarter is expected to be in line with the third quarter, down 9% year on year", the company warned.It did highlight its growing digital audience, with average monthly unique users and page views growing year on year by 18% and 26% respectively through October and Nove.ber."Underlying circulation and print advertising revenue in the fourth quarter is expected to fall by 4% and 16% respectively on the prior year, with circulation revenue trends marginally better than the third quarter and advertising revenue trends in-line with the third quarter."Trinity Mirror said it was making good progress against its "strategic initiatives", and was on track to deliver the targeted structural cost savings of £20m for the year.As of 14:45 GMT on Thursday, shares in Trinity Mirror were down 2.14% to 160.25p.