Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Hugh Grant accepted "an enormous sum of money" to settle a lawsuit accusing The Sun tabloid of unlawfully tapping his phone, bugging his car and breaking into his home to snoop on him, the actor said Wednesday after the agreement was announced in court.
Grant said he reluctantly settled because of a court policy that could have stuck him with a huge legal bill even if he prevailed at trial -- a reality that could also force fellow claimant Prince Harry to settle, their lawyer said. A civil court rule intended to avoid jamming up the courts would have required Grant to pay legal fees to both sides if he won at trial but was awarded anything lower than the settlement offer.
"As is common with entirely innocent people, they are offering me an enormous sum of money to keep this matter out of court," Grant said on the social media platform X. "Even if every allegation is proven in court, I would still be liable for something approaching 10 million pounds (US$12.4 million) in costs. I'm afraid I am shying at that fence."
The amount of the settlement was not disclosed. NGN said in a statement that it admitted no liability and said the settlement was in the financial interest of both parties to avoid a costly trial.
Grant and other claimants have alleged that NGN, a subsidiary of the media empire built by Rupert Murdoch, violated their privacy through widespread unlawful activity that included hiring private investigators to intercept voicemails, tap phones, bug cars and use deception to access confidential information between 1994 and 2016.
Grant is among several celebrities, including actress Sienna Miller, soccer star Paul Gascoigne and Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm who have settled claims against the publisher.
Attorney Gideon Benaim, who was not involved in the case, said the publisher probably used the "incredibly powerful" rules of the court by making an offer Grant was unlikely to surpass at trial. If a judge awarded Grant less than the settlement offer, he would have faced significant legal costs under the rules.
"Hugh Grant would have been left in little doubt by his lawyers that the offer was pitched so that there was a real risk that he would not `beat' it at trial," Benaim said. "Therefore, even though he may have preferred to have fought the case, the financial risks were simply too great and he had, in effect, no choice but to settle."
The settlement leaves The Duke of Sussex and 41 others scheduled to go to trial in the High Court in January, though their lawyer said settlements were being "forced upon" them.
"The Duke of Sussex is subject to the same issues that Sienna Miller and Hugh Grant have been subject to, which is that the offers are made that make it impossible for them to go ahead," David Sherborne told a judge Wednesday at a hearing in the case.
The settlement came less than a year after Justice Timothy Fancourt rejected NGN's attempt to throw out Grant's lawsuit alleging unlawful information gathering.
"If true ... these allegations would establish very serious, deliberate wrongdoing at NGN, conducted on an institutional basis on a huge scale," Fancourt wrote in May. "They would also establish a concerted effort to conceal the wrongdoing by hiding and destroying relevant documentary evidence, repeated public denials, lies to regulators and authorities, and unwarranted threats to those who dared to make allegations or notify intended claims against The Sun."
Grant said in a witness statement that he could never figure out who broke into his fourth-floor apartment in 2011. The door had been pried off its hinges and the interior looked like there had been a fight but nothing was missing. Two days later, The Sun had a story detailing the interior and "signs of a domestic row."
He said he was astonished when a private eye hired by The Sun disclosed that people working for the newspaper had burglarized his apartment and placed a tracking device on his car.
Grant, who previously settled a case against Murdoch's News of the World for hacking his phone, said he would not go away quietly.
"Murdoch's settlement money has a stink and I refuse to let this be hush money," he said. "I have spent the best part of 12 years fighting for a free press that does not distort the truth, abuse ordinary members of the public or hold elected (members of Parliament) to ransom in pursuit of newspaper barons' personal profit and political power."
Grant said he would direct the money to groups like Hacked Off, which was formed after phone hacking revelations in 2011 brought down News of the World and led to a government inquiry into unlawful press practices. Grant is a board member of the group that advocates for a free and accountable press.
While the now-defunct News of the World has apologized for hacking the phones of celebrities, politicians and families of dead soldiers and a murdered schoolgirl, The Sun has settled cases without admitting liability.
For Prince Harry, the case against The Sun is one of three similar lawsuits he has brought in his crusade to tame the British tabloids. He says the papers have hounded him most of his life and he blames them for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who died in a car crash while being pursued by paparazzi.
Last year, he won his first case to go to trial when Fancourt found phone hacking was "widespread and habitual" at Mirror Group Newspapers. In addition to a court judgment, he recently settled remaining allegations that included his legal fees. The total sum wasn't announced, but he was due to receive an interim payment of 400,000 pounds (US$498,000).
He has another case pending against the owner of the Daily Mail.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
Auston Matthews will miss the Maple Leafs' must-win Game 6 against the Boston Bruins.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.