Prince Harry's lawsuit against News Group Newspapers over the illegal collection of personal information has finally been heard in London, with Prince Harry set to appear in Rupert Murdoch's long-awaited court case against the British tabloid on Monday.
Prince Harry himself is not expected to take the stand for at least the first two weeks of the trial, which will be devoted to “general questions” about the newspaper's practices from the 1990s to the early 2010s. It turns out. The prince's phone and those of other celebrities were hacked to unearth intimate details.
Still, the hearing could be damaging for Mr. Murdoch and several former lieutenants. Lawyers for Charles III's second son Prince Harry, 40, will set out to prove that News Group executives concealed and sought to cover up evidence of hacking and other wrongdoing.
Harry is one of only two plaintiffs left from an original group of about 40 plaintiffs. The remaining members, including actor Hugh Grant, settled with the news group. Another plaintiff will also take the stand, former Labor deputy leader Tom Watson, who claims News Group hacked his phone and targeted him for political reasons.
Prince Harry has so far refused to settle the case, using the lawsuit as his last chance to hold Britain's press to account for one of its darkest days. In addition to cell phone hacking, tabloids hired private investigators and encouraged journalists to lie and misrepresent themselves in order to access highly personal data.
“One of the main reasons for getting this done is accountability, because I'm the last person to actually get it done,” Prince Harry said in an interview at the New York Times' Dealbook Summit last month. Ta.
He said any settlement may not cover his legal costs, and it's unclear whether any lawsuits will follow him, as the news group is actively trying to resolve its remaining lawsuits out of court. admitted that it was.
Still, given the relentless intrusion of the press into his life, the prospect of several days of testimony by the prince, who has left Britain for Southern California, promises a fascinating spectacle.
Prince Harry previously testified in the June 2023 hacking scandal against Mirror Group newspapers. At the time, he became the first senior member of the royal family to appear in court since 1891, when he testified about cheating during a baccarat match in which Queen Victoria's eldest son Prince Albert Edward was present.
Timothy Fancourt, the judge in the 2023 case and this one, ruled that Prince Harry was the victim of “extensive and persistent hacking” and awarded him £140,600. He was ordered to pay approximately $171,600 in damages. Prince Harry has settled the remaining privacy infringement lawsuit against Mirror Group for at least 400,000 pounds ($488,000).
Lawyers involved in past hacking cases said Prince Harry was risking days of cross-examination. He cited 30 articles from 1996 to 2011, some of which claim he was a regular drug user. His lawyer, David Sherborn, said that was not true.
If Prince Harry continues to reject News Group's settlement offer, he risks paying significant legal costs unless the court awards him a reasonable amount at the end of the trial, under British law. Although a last-minute settlement is still a possibility, his lawyers say it appears he intends to reveal the charges in open court.
“Prince Harry is determined that this is a price worth paying to get to what he believes to be the truth,” said Daniel Taylor, a media lawyer in London who is representing other former plaintiffs in the case. It seems like I've decided.” “His first and foremost duty is to bring this matter to court to expose what he believes is their gross wrongdoing.”
That in turn increases the risk for Mr Murdoch's former colleagues. Among those who could be exposed to unwelcome scrutiny is Will Lewis, a former news executive who helped manage the company's response to hacking scandals in 2010 and 2011 and is now publisher of the Washington Post. This includes Mr.
Prince Harry's lawyers say Mr Louis was part of a scheme to hide evidence of a hack that deleted files from News UK chief executive Rebecca Brooks' computer, and that the files were either lost or not yet saved. Not claimed to have been transferred to a USB drive. According to the complaint filed by the plaintiff, the package was opened because it was encrypted.
According to the News Group, Brooks was questioned about the email deletions during a criminal trial in 2014 and was acquitted. Mr. Lewis was not charged. He later served as chief executive officer of Dow Jones & Company, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and was named publisher of the Post in 2023.
“All allegations of wrongdoing are false,” Lewis said in a statement to the New York Times last June. “I have no further comment.”
News Group lawyers claim Prince Harry is trying to turn the trial into a wide-ranging public inquiry into phone hacking. In May, Mr Justice Fancourt rejected an attempt by Prince Harry's lawyers to bring Mr Murdoch into the case, saying: “Plaintiffs' litigators have no choice but to have a 'trophy', target or not. “There's a desire to hit a target.” Political issues and famous people. ”
Mr Murdoch, 93, testified in British parliament in 2011 that he should not be held personally responsible for the hack, given that he ran a global company with 53,000 employees. However, he shut down the tabloid News of the World, the newspaper most closely associated with the hack, and expressed remorse.
Mr. Murdoch remains Harry's nemesis. Prince Harry and his brother Prince William have long held tabloids and other organizations responsible for the death of their mother, Princess Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being chased by photographers.
In his memoir Spare, Mr Harry described Mr Murdoch's politics as being “right on the right side of the Taliban”.
“I didn't like the harm he did every day to the truth, the wanton blasphemy of objective fact,” Harry wrote. “I can't think of a single human being in the 300,000 year history of this species who has done more damage to our collective sense of reality.”
