Britain’s phone-hacking scandal has finally metastasized beyond the Rupert Murdoch empire today, as four alleged victims have sued the Daily Mirror, the tabloid once run by CNN’s Piers Morgan. The non–News Corp. case against the Trinity Mirror Group includes Beckham family nanny Abbie Gibson and former England soccer coach Sven-Goran Eriksson, but the real star might turn out to be Morgan, who ran the paper from 1995 until 2004, during which the supposed hacks occurred. Morgan has been defiant in the face of phone-hacking questions before, telling the Leveson Inquiry last year, “The average editor is probably aware of about 5 percent of what these journalists are up to at any given time.” He insisted then, “I’m not going to get into rumor-mongering,” but without some swift settlements, Morgan may be forced to this time around.
