(Bloomberg) --
News Corp. has apologized to three victims of phone hacking, almost a decade after the height of a scandal that shook the company -- and U.K. journalism -- to its core.
Attorneys for News Group Newspapers, a subsidiary of News Corp., read apologies in a London court to three people who claimed their phones were hacked by the News of the World, once the U.K.'s largest newspaper, as well as the company's Sun tabloid.
The national scandal peaked in 2011 amid revelations that the News of the World routinely listened in on private phone messages to break stories on celebrity gossip and other news. The resulting furor led to the shuttering of the newspaper as well as the collapse of News Corp.'s plans to acquire Sky Plc.
The claims filed by actors Mark Womack and Antony Dunn, and Natalka Znak, a television producer, were part of a new wave of phone-hacking lawsuits filed against both News Corp. and Reach Plc's Daily Mirror.
An attorney for News Group said that the activity “should never have taken place” and that it had “no right to intrude” into the private lives of the defendants.
The apologies were part of settlements made in August that included significant cash settlements and the paying of their legal costs. News Corp. admitted no liability as part of the apology.
To contact the reporter on this story: Eddie Spence in London at espence11@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Christopher Elser
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