A model is suing the Sun and Scotland Yard in the first civil claim linked to alleged corrupt payments to police officers and public officials.
Sarah Hannon is claiming damages at the high court for misuse of private information by the Metropolitan police and the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid.
She appeared in a Sun story in June 2010 that claimed her then-boyfriend was arrested after allegedly engaging in a sex act with another woman on a flight from Heathrow to Bangalore.
Sarah Hannon is claiming damages at the high court for misuse of private information by the Metropolitan police and the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid.
She appeared in a Sun story in June 2010 that claimed her then-boyfriend was arrested after allegedly engaging in a sex act with another woman on a flight from Heathrow to Bangalore.
Her claim is the first linked to alleged payments to police officers, potentially opening a new front in Scotland Yard's Operation Elveden inquiry which has led to the arrests of about 65 journalists, police officers or public officials since 2011.
Other individuals, including the Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood and the mother of England footballer John Terry, are among those whose details have been leaked to the Sun.
The legal action will be a fresh headache for the Sun's publisher, News International, which is attempting to settle civil claims brought by alleged victims of phone hacking by the News of the World.
The newspaper group has paid damages to 261 claimants to date, but others, including the Notting Hill actor Rhys Ifans, have not yet been settled. Those claimants brought cases at the high court after the Metropolitan police began contacting dozens of alleged phone-hacking victims when it launched in January 2011.
To date, six Sun journalists have been charged under the Operation Elveden investigation along with a number of other former police officers and public officials.
Clodagh Hartley, the Sun's Whitehall editor, is to appear at Westminster magistrates court on Wednesday on charges of conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office in relation to alleged payments to Jonathan Hall, a press officer at Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, and his partner, Marta Bukarewicz for stories.
The Crown Prosecution Service said the Sun is alleged to have paid £17,475 to the pair between 30 March 2008 and 15 July 2011 for information, including unannounced details of the 2010 budget and the government's deficit reduction plans.
Scotland Yard and News International had not returned a request for comment at the time of publication.
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