Court: UK's Mirror Group must pay record damages for hacking

LONDON — British judges ruled Thursday that Mirror Group Newspapers must pay record damages to eight phone-hacking victims, saying the papers' staff engaged in "disgraceful conduct."

Parent company Trinity Mirror PLC, which faces dozens more lawsuits by victims of illegal eavesdropping, announced that it was increasing the amount it had set aside to deal with civil phone-hacking claims from 28 million pounds ($42 million) to 41 million pounds ($61 million).

The company, which owns the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror tabloids, had appealed an earlier ruling that it must pay a total of 1.2 million pounds ($1.79 million) to eight victims, including actress Sadie Frost and former soccer star Paul Gascoigne.

All eight individual payouts surpassed the previous record award in a British privacy case of 60,000 pounds.