Lawyers preparing News of the World phone-hacking claims in New York
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is facing the growing threat of legal action in the US after two prominent lawyers said they were preparing News of the World phone-hacking claims in New York.
Mark Lewis, the lawyer behind many phone-hacking claims in the UK, flew to the US on Thursday for legal discussions about four potential actions against News Corp in the United States.
A second London lawyer is understood to have started exploring the possibility of legal proceedings over alleged phone hacking across the Atlantic. This lawyer, who declined to be named because proceedings had not been filed, claimed there was "considerable evidence" that a celebrity client had had voicemail messages intercepted by the now closed News of the World while on US soil.
The fresh legal moves mark a broadening of the attack on Murdoch's media empire, whose multimillion-dollar US headquarters has so far remained untouched by the scandal that has engulfed the group's UK newspaper operation.
The potential US lawsuits are understood to relate mainly to public figures who believe their phones were hacked while in America, where voicemail interception could constitute a violation of US telecommunications and privacy laws.
Lewis will next week begin discussions with his New York-based legal partner Norman Siegel, former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, over the details of US law as it applies to phone hacking.
One of the legal issues being explored by those preparing fresh lawsuits in the US is the rule over so-called "double recovery": that is, whether or not a claimant is able to win damages from a defendant in a foreign jurisdiction following earlier action in a different country.
It is also understood that a US citizen had his or her phone hacked while in America as a result of hacking into the transatlantic conversation of a foreign-based celebrity who was a friend of the victim.
So far, the US component of the hacking scandal has been confined to an FBI and department of justice investigation under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which forbids corporations headquartered in the US from indulging in acts of bribery or corruption abroad. Any lawsuit that flows from Lewis's US activities would take the scandal to another level by becoming the first legal action within the US.
The legal moves carried out in America come as phone hacking lawyers prepare a fresh tranche of civil claims in the high court in London.
News Group Newspapers, the News International subsidiary that published the News of the World, could face up to 200 more civil actions, with figures including Cherie Blair, the wife of the former Labour prime minister, singer James Blunt, Ukip leader Nigel Farage, and Alex Best, the wife of the ex-Manchester United footballer George Best, having already filed claims.