LONDON (AP) — Tens of millions of dollars are at stake Prince Harry returned to court on Monday for the third and final chapter in his legal quest to tame Britain’s tabloids.
Harry, also known as the Duke of Sussex, is the most prominent litigant in a case filled with high-profile plaintiffs who accuse the publisher of the Daily Mail of violating their privacy by using unlawful information-gathering tactics to spy on them for sensational headlines.
Harry, Elton John and actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost are among a group of seven who claim that Associated Newspapers Ltd. has hired private investigators to bug their cars, obtain their private information, and listen in on phone conversations.
The publisher has denied the allegations, calling them ridiculous.
Lawyer David Sherborne opened his case by saying there was a decades-long culture at Associated Newspapers of unlawfully digging up dirt “that destroyed the lives of so many.”
He said the company’s strong denials, the destruction of documents and the “massive masses of missing documents” had prevented claimants from learning what the newspapers had done.
“They swore they were a clean sweep,” Sherborne said. “Associated knew these emphatic denials were untrue. … They knew they had skeletons in their closet.”
The trial in London’s High Court is expected to last nine weeks and will mark Harry’s second return to the witness box since he made history in 2023 by becoming the first senior member of the royal family to testify in more than a century.
Harry waved cheerfully to reporters and said “good morning” as he entered the courthouse through a side entrance. He took a seat in the back row of the courtroom, near Hurley and Frost.
The prince versus the publishers
The case was one of several to emerge from the widespread phone hacking scandal in which some journalists began intercepting voicemail messages at the turn of the century and which continued for more than a decade.
Harry won a court judgment in 2023 in which the editors of the Daily Mirror were convicted of ‘widespread and habitual’ phone hacking. Last year, Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid made a big impression unprecedented apology for infringing on his life for years, and agreed to pay significant damages in settlement his lawsuit over invasion of privacy.
Harry’s self-appointed mission to reform the media is more personal and goes far beyond the headlines that attempted to document the ups and downs of his party boy romance.
He holds the press responsible for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who died in a car crash in 1997 while being chased by paparazzi in Paris. He also blames them for persistent attacks on his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussexwhich led them to leave royal life and move to the United States in 2020.
Repairing the rift within the royal family
The lawsuit comes as Harry tries to repair a damaged relationship with his family since moving to America and burning the bridge behind him by penning a searing 2023 memoir, ‘Spare,’ and airing other family grievances in a Netflix series.
The icy relationship with his father, King Charles III, seems to thaw a little later the two met for tea last fall when Harry was last in town.
But a reunion seems unlikely this time.
The start of the trial coincides with Charles’ trip to Scotland and Harry’s visit is expected to be limited to the opening of the trial and his first testimony.
Pre-trial wins and losses
The case against the Mail was filed in 2022 and has been the subject of several contentious hearings that have led to rulings that both sides have claimed as victories.
Lawyers for Associated Newspapers had argued that the case should be dismissed because claims dating back to 1993 were filed too late. But in a ruling saying the cases had a “real prospect of success”, Judge Matthew Nicklin said the newspapers had “not been able to deliver a ‘knockout blow’ to the claims.
In the same ruling, Nicklin gave the Mail a win, saying Harry and the others could not use documents allegedly showing payments from the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday to private investigators because they had been disclosed in confidence in a government investigation into phone hacking.
But Harry’s lawyers later received permission from British government officials to use the documents.
Private investigator with conflicting claims
A private investigator whose name appears on an affidavit supporting Harry and the celebrities’ claims has filed another affidavit denying he ever snooped on them.
At an early hearing in the case, defense attorney David Sherborne said his clients were unaware they were victims of phone hacking until Gavin Burrows and other investigators came forward in 2021 to “do the right thing” and help those he targeted.
Burrows said he must have done ‘hundreds of jobs’ for the Mail between 2000 and 2005, and that Harry, John and his husband, David Furnish, and Hurley and Frost were ‘just a handful of my targets’.
But he has since signed another statement saying he was not hired by Associated Newspapers to do any illegal work.
It is unclear what impact his conflicting statements will have on the case.
The other claimants are anti-racism campaigner Doreen Lawrence and former politician Simon Hughes.
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