A lawyer for many of Britain's phone hacking victims said Friday that legal action would be launched in the United States against Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Mark Lewis told The Associated Press that lawyers in the United States would be pursuing the case within the next week.

In a brief telephone interview he said that he had hired Norman Siegel, who represents the families of many of those killed on Sept. 11, 2001, to take on News Corp. in the United States.

Lewis said that the case would be contested in New York.

In an earlier interview with Sky News television, Lewis said that he expected that "the first hearings will be in the next two to three months."