News of the World - last edition this Sunday

[brakespear]

much as I hate the Torygraph that is a belting headline

 

[Gully]

So many rumours going around Twitter atm, including Brooks shagging Murdoch - though which one is uncertain

Naah, both of them have had every chance to screw her over the last few weeks but seem to flatly refuse...maybe she stinks of more than just pee!

 

[drew]

Fascinating blog, here, from Reuters. According to media lawyers, now that the NotW has been closed, News Corp will be able to shred all the evidence relating to on-going legal action. Thus getting off scott-free.

The evil genius of Murdoch.


Is Murdoch free to destroy tabloid’s records?
JUL 7, 2011 16:10 EDT


NEWS OF THE WORLD | RUPERT MURDOCH
By Alison Frankel
The views expressed are her own.

Here’s some News of the World news to spin the heads of American lawyers. According to British media law star Mark Stephens of Finers Stephens Innocent (whom The Times of London has dubbed “Mr Media”), Rupert Murdoch’s soon-to-be shuttered tabloid may not be obliged to retain documents that could be relevant to civil and criminal claims against the newspaper—even in cases that are already underway. That could mean that dozens of sports, media, and political celebrities who claim News of the World hacked into their telephone accounts won’t be able to find out exactly what the tabloid knew and how it got the information.

If News of the World is to be liquidated, Stephens told Reuters, it “is a stroke of genius—perhaps evil genius.”

Under British law, Stephens explained, all of the assets of the shuttered newspaper, including its records, will be transferred to a professional liquidator (such as a global accounting firm). The liquidator’s obligation is to maximize the estate’s assets and minimize its liabilities. So the liquidator could be well within its discretion to decide News of the World would be best served by defaulting on pending claims rather than defending them. That way, the paper could simply destroy its documents to avoid the cost of warehousing them—and to preclude any other time bombs contained in News of the World’s records from exploding.

“Why would the liquidator want to keep [the records]?” Stephens said. “Minimizing liability is the liquidator’s job.”

That’s a very different scenario, Stephens said, from what would happen if a newspaper in the U.S. went into bankruptcy. In the U.S., a plaintiff (or, for that matter, a criminal investigator) could obtain a court order barring that kind of document destruction. In the U.K., there’s no requirement that the estate retain its records, nor any law granting plaintiffs a right to stop the liquidator from getting rid of them.


Is Murdoch free to destroy tabloids records? | MediaFile

But in this case the paper is not in liquidation. In the past, newspaper that close have done so because they are an economical failure. Who are the creditors that require funds?