LONDON - A blog-writing detective who was unmasked by The Times is suing the newspaper for hacking his email, his lawyer said Friday, in the latest twist in the scandal engulfing Rupert Murdoch's British titles.
Richard Horton lodged a claim at the High Court in London earlier this week for substantial damages for "breach of confidence, misuse of private information and deceit", according to court papers.
"We've just issued and served proceedings," Patrick Daulby, a partner at Taylor Hampton Solicitors, told AFP, adding that the detective was also seeking an apology from the newspaper.
News International, the publisher of The Times, the most prestigious of Murdoch's British titles, declined to comment.
Times editor James Harding admitted earlier this year that one of its reporters had been disciplined after hacking the police detective's email account in 2009.
The reporter had been working to expose Horton as the author of NightJack, a popular blog that gave a behind-the-scenes view of police work.
"I sorely regret the intrusion into Richard Horton's email account by a journalist then in our newsroom," Harding told the Leveson inquiry into press standards in February, adding that the reporter had since left the
newspaper.
Horton went to the High Court to try to stop The Times naming him but a judge ruled that the story was in the public interest.
However, it has since emerged the newspaper failed to disclose to the court that the story was obtained in part because of email hacking.
British police have launched an investigation into the affair, which runs alongside an existing probe into phone hacking at The Times' sister paper, the now defunct News of the World weekly.
Murdoch shut down the Sunday tabloid in July last year after it emerged its journalists had been involved in hacking the voicemails of hundreds of public figures and victims of crime, including a teenage girl later found murdered.
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