Mark Lewis, a partner at London media firm Taylor Hampton, is currently representing 80 clients in the phone-hacking scandal that’s roiling News International, a subsidiary of media giant News Corporation. Employees of the tabloid News of the World had long been suspected of illegally accessing the phones of celebrities and members of the British royal family in search of scoops. But last summer, when it was revealed that NoW reporters had hacked the phone of a young murder victim, as well as the phones of victims of the deadly July 2005 bombings in London, the public outcry forced News International to shutter the 168-year-old weekly paper. In July the British government launched a formal investigation, and during the course of the inquiry it was revealed that the paper had hired a private investigator to spy on Lewis and his family. (He had been hired by the family of the murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, and has since won a £3 million ($4.7 million) settlement for the Dowlers from News International over the allegations.) Lewis spoke to chief European correspondent Chris Johnson about the invasion of his privacy and his role in the government’s ongoing investigation.
How did you become involved in the News of the World scandal? I [represented] Joanne Armstrong, the in-house lawyer for the [U.K. soccer player union] Professional Footballers’ Association, who was falsely alleged to be having an affair with the organization’s chief executive, Gordon Taylor. I was told that the story had come from “a proper journalistic enquiry,” but I later realized it was based on hacked information. I also represented the Dowlers in the case that closed the paper. Their daughter Milly was murdered in 2002, and just before the murder trial began in 2011, they were told that they had been victims of phone hacking. It was grief upon grief.
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