Prince Harry’s lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s UK Tabloids has begun

Prince Harry will get his long-awaited day in court against Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloids on Monday, as his lawsuit against News Group Newspapers over the illegal collection of private information escalates trial in London.

Harry himself is not expected to take the stand during the first two weeks of the trial, which will be devoted to “general issues” relating to the newspaper’s practices from the 1990s to the early 2010s. , when the lawyers told their reporters. hacked the prince’s and other celebrities’ phones to dig up details.

Even so, the hearings could be damaging to Mr Murdoch and many of his former lieutenants. Lawyers for Harry, 40, the younger brother of King Charles III, will show that the News Group boss hid and sought to destroy evidence of hacking and wrongdoing.

Harry is one of two publishers left from the original group of about 40; The rest, including actor Hugh Grant, sat down with News Group. Another plaintiff, also on the docket, is Tom Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labor Party, who claims the News Group hacked his phone and targeted him for political reasons.

Harry has refused to settle until now, putting his coat on as a last-ditch effort to keep the British press from covering one of its darkest periods. In addition to hacking phones, tabloids hired private detectives and encouraged reporters to lie and impersonate themselves to obtain private data.

“One of the big reasons for seeing this is accountability, because I’m the last person to really do it,” Harry said last month in an interview with The New York Times’ DealBook. Summit.

He acknowledged that any settlement may not compensate him for his legal fees, and with News Group aggressively seeking to settle the remaining cases out of court, it is unclear whether any cases will follow.

However, the prospect of days of testimony by the prince, who left Britain for southern California in part because of what he said was a relentless press intrusion on the ‘his life, guarantees a spectacular display.

Harry testified once, in June 2023 in the Mirror Group newspaper hacking case. At the time, he was the first member of the royal family to stand trial since 1891, when Queen Victoria’s eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, testified in a criminal case. during the baccarat game he attended.

Timothy Fancourt, the judge in the 2023 case as well as the current one, ruled that Harry suffered a “widespread and common divorce,” and awarded him 140,600 pounds, or $171,600. Harry paid the rest of his personal claim against the Mirror Group, at least £400,000, or $488,000.

Lawyers involved in previous hacking cases have said Harry risks being exposed for days under investigation. He cited 30 articles from 1996 to 2011, some of which confirmed that he was a chronic drug addict. His lawyer, David Sherborne, said that was not true.

If Harry continues to refuse the News Group’s settlement offer, under English law he risks paying large legal fees if the court does not award an appropriate amount at the end of the trial. If a last-minute settlement is possible, the attorney said he apparently plans to take the charges to open court.

“Harry seems to have reconciled himself that this is a price to pay for what he believes to be the truth,” said Daniel Taylor, a media lawyer in London who has previously represented other publishers in the case. “His highest priority is to take the matter to court to show what he believes to be a grave mistake on their part.”

That, in turn, raises the stakes for Mr. Murdoch’s former associates. Among those likely to be unpopular 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. now.

Harry’s lawyers said Rebekah was part of a scheme to cover up evidence of the hack by removing files from the computer of News UK chief executive Rebekah Brooks. Brooks. opened because it was encrypted, according to the complaint filed by the plaintiff.

The News Group said Ms. Brooks was questioned about deleting emails during her 2014 criminal trial, and was cleared of the charges. Mr. Lewis was never charged. He later served as chief executive of Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, before being named publisher of The Post in 2023.

“All allegations of wrongdoing are false,” Mr. Lewis said in a statement to The New York Times last June. “I have no other ideas to do.”

Lawyers for the News Group argue that Harry is trying to turn the trial into a public inquiry into phone hacking. In May, Judge Fancourt rejected a bid by Harry’s lawyers to bring Mr Murdoch into the case, saying: “There is a desire from those running the court in side demanding to shoot the targets of the ‘trophy’, or political problems or high-ranking people.”

Mr. Murdoch, who is 93, testified before the British Parliament in 2011 that he should not be personally responsible for the hacking, given that he ran a global company with 53,000 employees. But it shut down the News of the World, the tabloid most closely associated with the hacking, and issued a contrite apology.

For Harry, Mr. Murdoch remained his archnemesis. Harry and his older brother William have long held the tabloids, among others, responsible for the death of their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, who died in a car accident in Paris in 1997 while being chased the photographer.

In his memoir, “Spare,” Harry described Mr. Murdoch’s politics as “to the right of the Taliban.”

“I don’t like the evil he does to the Truth every day, the destruction of reality,” Harry wrote. “I couldn’t think of a single person in the 300,000-year history of species who has done more damage to our sense of reality.”