Offering to meet Sienna Miller's financial demand in full is the first step in closing down the civil cases against the company
Sienna Miller wanted £100,000 to settle her phone-hacking case. The actor and her legal team chose to limit – set an informal maximum – for her claim, in a handwritten addition to her original lawsuit filed last year. Unsurprisingly, that is the number that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation chose to match, with a £100,000 offer of damages made quietly last week and disclosed in the high court by its lawyers.
The money is substantial, but if News Corp is going to close down the 24 and rising number of civil cases, it has to start somewhere. Miller's case is not only fairly advanced, but it is high-profile: she provides a ready source of photographs and television footage to illustrate what is otherwise a rather complex and technical series of actions. And, by setting an upper limit on her demands for compensation, the publisher of the News of the World can argue that it is giving her exactly what she wants.
The law concedes it is possible for a court to award more than the maximum amount asked for in the original claim form. However, it is rare. If Miller wants the money, she has got it, and the publisher's calculus will be that the star known for roles in films such as Alfie and Layer Cake is unlikely to become a tribune of the people. And with News Corp conceding that Miller was the victim of many attempts to access her voicemail over a sustained period, a settlement will ensure that the evidence relating to her case does not come out.
No wonder, then, that News Corporation thought it had a good day – even if armies of lawyers and litigants descended on the court to work out how the hacking cases could proceed. Mr Justice Vos set some broad tramlines as to how all the cases could proceed, by selecting a group of four test cases (including Miller) to go forward – if, that is, they last – while the company prepares to pick them off one by one with settlement offers for each. Miller, insiders indicated, is only the first.
The news that police might launch a second criminal investigation into comments made eight years ago by Rebekah Brooks that journalists "had paid police for information" did not put the company off its stride. Brooks, as the Guardian revealed this week, has already had her phone tapped by the police after a previous attempt to get to the bottom of her ill-judged comment to MPs in 2003; that inquiry did not find any evidence of wrongdoing. However, this time the investigation – if it materalises – would not be an inquiry into Brooks herself but a broader examination of whether journalists were paying the police for information. That could be complex for the police to pursue, but has the potential to turn up all sorts of new evidence. That, too, should give News Corp some pause for thought.