News International Sean Dempsey/PA

News International have confirmed that legal papers have been filed but declined to comment further

Credit: Sean Dempsey/PA

The police officer who was the anonymous author of the Orwell Prize-winning NightJack blog is suing Times Newpapers.

Richard Horton, the Lancashire detective exposed by the Times as the blog's author, has filed a legal claim at the High Court, the Guardian reports.

In February the Times admitted hacking into the police officer's email account in 2009 and the newspaper's editor, James Harding, apologised.

Emails read out at the Leveson inquiry revealed journalist Patrick Foster accessed Horton's email account and sought advice from the Times' legal manager at the time, Alastair Brett.

Harding has since apologised that full details about how the story was obtained were not disclosed to the court three years ago.

The Times exposed Horton as the author after going to the high court to overturn an injunction preventing it from identifying him.

It argued at the time that the story had been obtained through journalistic endeavour and was in the public interest.

News International, which owns the Times, confirmed that legal papers had been filed but declined to comment.

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