LONDON: Judges have ruled that Britain’s Mirror Group Newspapers must pay record damages to phone-hacking victims, saying the papers’ staff engaged in “disgraceful conduct.” The company, which owns the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror tabloids, had appealed an earlier ruling that it must pay a total of 1.2 million pounds ($1.79 million) to eight victims, including actress Sadie Frost and former soccer star Paul Gascoigne. All eight individual payouts surpassed the previous record award in a British privacy case — 60,000 pounds. Three appeals court judges upheld the original ruling on Thursday, saying the hacking had caused “great distress.”