Singer won't settle, forces NOTW to court

Charlotte Church. Photo / Supplied

Singer Charlotte Church and her family were left yesterday as the last participants in the first wave of damages cases against Rupert Murdoch's media empire in a damaging public trial which threatens to reveal the full inside story of phone hacking at the News of the World.

Church has refused to settle her damages claim against the defunct Sunday tabloid in what could become a landmark trial, bearing testimony to her determination to expose what she claims was four years of hacking of both her and her parents' phones.

News International lawyers app-ealed, and failed, in the High Court yesterday to have the February 28 trial delayed.

Church found herself the lone protagonist in the battle against the paper's "industrial scale" hacking after more settlements involving phone hacking victims were announced.

Comedian Steve Coogan received £40,000 ($75,715) and former footballer Paul Gascoigne received £68,000 making the latest total of settled claims 15 after a first round of 37.

At the core of Church's complaints against the paper is a story headlined: "Church in three in a bed cocaine shock."

The story wasn't about the singer, but her father and led, she said, to her mother attempting suicide.

Presiding judge Justice Vos had been expected to use some of the trials to construct a framework of damage levels that would be used in new claims on phone hacking against the paper.

- INDEPENDENT