LONDON, May 21 (Reuters) - Eight mostly celebrity victims ofphone-hacking won a total of 1.2 million pounds ($1.9 million)in damages from Britain's Trinity Mirror newspaper group onThursday in the first civil lawsuit related to the tabloidscandal to conclude in court.
The victims were actress Sadie Frost, retired footballerPaul Gascoigne, BBC executive Alan Yentob, three actors from TVsoap operas, a TV producer and a flight attendant who had datedEngland footballer Rio Ferdinand.
Trinity Mirror, owner of the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirrortabloids, said it was considering an appeal against the HighCourt ruling.
"We have said all along that we would pay full, fair andproper compensation to the claimants and that is not indispute," a spokeswoman said.
"However, damages need to be proportionate to compensationawarded in previous cases of physical and mental suffering ...Our current view is that the basis used for calculating thedamages is incorrect."
Trinity Mirror shares were down 1.9 percent at 1037 GMT.
The eight claimants sought damages after reporters seekingscoops listened to their voicemail messages, leading in somecases to salacious stories and to the victims suspecting thoseclose to them of leaking information to reporters.
Frost was awarded 260,250 pounds, Gascoigne 188,250 poundsand Yentob 85,000 pounds.
The awards were larger than those given to victims inout-of-court settlements, and Frost's was believed to be thesingle biggest privacy damages payout since the phone-hackingscandal broke, according to the Guardian newspaper.
Trinity Mirror said last July it had set aside 4 millionpounds over the first six months of the year to cover the costof dealing with and settling phone-hacking claims.
Thursday's High Court ruling was the first time that a civillawsuit related to phone-hacking has been decided by a judge.Previous damages claims against both Trinity Mirror and RupertMurdoch's News UK group were settled out of court.
The phone-hacking scandal erupted in 2011 when it wasrevealed that some staff at Murdoch's News of the World tabloidhad routinely listened to private voicemail messages to generatescoops, prompting Murdoch to shut down the 168-year-old paper.
Police have been conducting a vast investigation intophone-hacking and other suspected illegal practices by tabloidnewspapers. At first the focus was mostly on Murdoch's titles,but it later widened to the Trinity Mirror newspapers.
The group has said it was cooperating with the MetropolitanPolice Service investigations.
Piers Morgan, a former editor of the Mirror who went on tobecome a well-known TV presenter in the United States, has beenquestioned by police twice in connection with theirinvestigations. He has denied any involvement and has not beencharged.
An eight-month criminal trial into hacking at the News ofthe World resulted in a conviction for conspiracy to interceptmessages for former editor Andy Coulson, who had gone on to workas Prime Minister David Cameron's communications chief.
Rebekah Brooks, another former News of the World editor whohad risen to be the boss of Murdoch's entire British newspaperarm, was acquitted of all charges in the same trial. (Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Stephen Addison)
