Phone hacking: Andy Coulson given permission to appeal over ruling that he must pay own legal costs The Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, and Lord Justice Laws in the Court of Appeal said 43-year-old Mr Coulson had an "arguable case" which should go before three judges at a full one-day hearing, for which no date was set. Mr Coulson, who resigned from the News of the World in February 2007 after the paper's royal editor was jailed for phone hacking, has sued NGN over the construction of a clause within a severance agreement. Mr Coulson wants a declaration that NGN, which stopped reimbursement in August last year, "must pay the professional costs and expenses properly incurred" by him "in defending allegations of criminal conduct" during his tenure. At a High Court hearing in December, NGN's counsel said the disputed clause in Mr Coulson's severance agreement covered the "occupational hazards of being an editor" and not alleged criminal activity. Mr Coulson, who was arrested in July 2011 as part of Scotland Yard's phone-hacking inquiry and released on bail, has always denied any wrongdoing. He resigned from his position as Prime Minister David Cameron's director of communications in January 2011, saying that coverage of the scandal was making it too difficult for him to do his job.